Hi all, I got a free HP laptop. It woudl not boot he told me. When i try to use my cd to boot, and rebuild the PC. I get the following errors Non-Emulated CD rom cannot find NTLDR When i boot to the hard drive, the PC starts up , i see the "winxp" loading screen for about 3 seconds then i get the blue screen of death for a split second, then it reboots. the blue screen comes and goes so fast i cannot read anyting. is this a hard drive issue? or is the MBR messed up? there is NO floppy drive, so i cannot use a boot disk? what are my options? i dont think it is the hard drive. but again, i cant use abot disk to fix the MBR? please help me??? derek
HP, along with other vendors, use CD/Floppy emulation. It seems to wreak havoc for a lot of people trying to re/install XP. Try downloading the 6 boot disks for XP and, using Nero, make an emulated floppy. All 6 disk images will be on the CD and the laptop will see it as a floppy. I know its a pain, but it may be the only way without the original OEM install disk. Also, hop into the BIOS and check all the setting related to boot sequence, CD-rom, floppy emulation, etc. If there is a failsafe option, try it. You never know. Keep up posted and good luck. ~Rich
