XP boot up problems

[Shepps]

[Michael15]

I'm his friend, Its really annoying cant do anything with the computer all i can get into is the BIOs settings.
My computer is/was
Athlon XP 1700+
512mb DDR ram
GeForce 2 mx400
80Gb hdd (dont know manufacturer etc)
can anyone help me?
:cry: :cry: :cry:

[hbidad]

Do you remeber what the last thing you were doing when this problem happend? Does your Bios detect you harddrive when you power up?

[Michael15]

The last thing i was doing was downloading norton antvirus 2002, yes the bios detects my hard drive and all the other hard ware CD rom DVD rom etc

[hbidad]

Are you dual booting are anything special? I would try to boot the xp boot disk's and chose the "Repair" feature. If you need the Boot disk's ( I think there is 4 or 5) just email me and I'll look for them.

[Anonymous]

i dunno what dual booting means but at a guess it means booting with 2 hard drives, so the answer is no ive just got one hard drive, and ive already got the XP boot up program i just need to make a set.

[Michael15]

sorry i forgot to log in

[hbidad]

ok, just make the set ...make sure you change the bios back to boot from the a:/ first.... After it all loads it will have an option to install Xp or to repair it.....do the repair option...I think if you choose the install option it will erase all your files...I maybe be wrong but I THINK It happend to me awhile back. Maybe someone can quote me on this.

[Raven]

i dunno what dual booting means but at a guess it means booting with 2 hard drives, so the answer is no ive just got one hard drive, and ive already got the XP boot up program i just need to make a set.

Dual booting is when you have two operating systems installed (say Windows XP and Win 98SE) on a system. Windows XP will give you a menu asking which OS you wish to start.

[Corduroy]

I hate to say something so simple, but have you actually hit a key when it attempts to boot from CD? Most BIOSes I have worked with will look for a CD, but ask you to a hit a key to boot from it. If you are getting the black screen with the XP logo on it, your comp is fine, the key is getting into the recovery console. Occasionally with XP and ATA 100 drives writing errors can occur and I have found that running FIXBOOT and CHKDSK in the recovery console fix everything. You may run CHKDSK and find that it does not want to scan your disk, in which case you would type CHKDSK /P which forces a scan.