Suddenly my XP box won't start...

[Mawashi]

...i got the "insert boot media" message so i opened the box, check all of the cables, went into bios and saw that my maxtor was being recognized as a primary master, checked jumper too everything looks fine to me so i rebooted couple time, changed CMOS battery but to no avail.

Update 1: I'm now able to access the hd from a 3.5 enclosure, is there a program i can use to recover what's been corrupted and get XP to boot from that disk?

Update2: Was able to boot into XP by booting from XP cd....any idea what/how should i recover my hd to make it boot by itself w/o the XP cd?

Thanks for your time.
M

 

[cprince]

Try fixmbr and fixboot in the recovery console. However, I think that you should backup your data first using another computer, just in case your HDD is about to die.

 

[Mawashi]

Thanks for the advise Cprince! I was also wondering if now that i'm in my XP environment, what about if i use the winxp restore function to restore it to last week, would that fix the boot issue?

 

[cprince]

What do you mean by "XP environment"? Have you successfully booted into Windows XP?

 

[Mawashi]

yes i was able to get into the XP installed on my HD. When i inserted the XP cd in the drive and rebooted, i didn't press any keys when i saw the message "press any key to boot from cd" and it just started my XP from my HD by itself.

I then shut down and removed the cd and tried rebooting but went back to square one, so it seems that with the XP cd in the drive at boot time i'm able to get into the XP version i've installed on my hd.

 

[Mawashi]

Update: I used the recovery console and did the fixboot, fixmbr but to no avail. The only i can get into the XP installed on my hd is by having the xp cd in the cd drive at boot time and not pressing any keys when i get the "press any key to boot from cd" for some reason it's the only way i can boot that hd now.

Is the HD about to die or is it a XP problem?

 

[RebateMonger]

Access any important data on the hard drive and back it up elsewhere (to a different drive).

AFTER doing that, you can attempt a CD-based or Floppy-based diagnosis of your hard drive using the manufacturer's free diagnositcs program.

If it fails, replace the drive.
If it passes, you can try a "Repair Install" of XP using your XP Install CD.

 

[scott0482]

that makes no sense.. try it with some other random cd just for fun... or try burning a copy of the xp cd.. leaving it in there and only restarting once a month.. shouldn't be too big on an inconvenience..

now that i am thinking more.. what is your drive setup.. is your hard drive IDE or SATA? what about the cd drive? are they on the same ide chain, or different? what are the jumpers set to, slave, master, cable select, nothing? it sounds like it could be some weird conflict cause by having both drives as master, or one as "only drive" and one as slave.. or some combination of that..

did this only start recently though?

i just re read your original post, and you said you checked your jumpers.. but are you sure they are all good? if the drive shows up in the external enclosure, can't you just copy everything off.. and then try to reinstall windows?

 

[Mawashi]

thanks for the feedback. This system has been up and running flawlessly for over 3 years now and this just happened 2 days ago that's when i opened it to check all connections, jumpers and the rest. Yesterday i disconnected everything else and left the HD by itself set as a master connect to the right cable and recognized as such by my bios but to no avail.

At this point, i've the HD set up as master by itself on one cable and the cd on the other also as master. My bios recognized both properly but if i don't have the xp cd in the cd at boot time like i described above, my hd won't boot, i know it's weird but that's what going on.

I removed the hd, put it in an enclosure and hooked it up to my laptop and ran Norton disk doctor w/o a glitch. Then i put it back in the desktop and same result. So next i've rebooted and use the recovery console to run bootfix and mbrfix and did a chkdsk /r/f after that and all went well but to no avail.

The hd is an IDE (Maxtor 250gb, 3y old). I've been able to get into xp using that "trick" about 10 times now, it seems to work everytime but i've no clue why my hd uses the cd to boot all i know is that w/o the cd i get the "insert boot media device" message and with the cd in the drive w/o doing anything my hd boot and run XP for hours at the time properly.

i've made an acronis copy of the drive but really wonder is this is something i can fix because some is corrupted on the hd or if it's on it's last leg...i'd hate to have to reinstall XP and loose all of my settings/programs and stuff if it's some that could be fixed otherwise.

Folllowing the suggestion above, i've rebooted with a ramdom cd and got the "insert media" right away, i then used a Vista DVD install and i got to the "click here to load" then I saw the message that says loading file but then the screen goes black and nothing.