Windows xp boot problem.

[cydonia]

Hi guys, I have recently have been getting error message: FAIL BOOT.INI loading from C:/windows when booting up. It was annoying but did not seem to affect anything so I ignored it. But now it started checking the disc drive for consistency every time I boot up into windows. I could not figure out what was causing this so I tried to split the partition and reinstall a fresh copy of xp on the new partition. But now the windows won't even boot and restarts as soon as it enters the loading screen. But my biggest problem is that the computer will not boot from windows xp cd, I have cd-drive as boot priority but it just tries to boot from harddrive. I am really tired from trying to fix this all night so sorry if that sounded like ramble. I would appreciate any kind of advice\.

 

[minendo]

Boot to DOS prompt. Type in fdisk /mbr. Press Enter. Restart.

 

[cydonia]

sorry but how can you get into DOS prompt? I have tried holding down f5 while booting but nothing seems to happen and I do not have a floppy disk drive. Thank you

 

[Foadbot]

i believe that in windows xp you need to boot to the recovery console and use fixmbr and not fdisk /mbr , also the fact that the first partition is probably marked active still and as the boot /system parititon might be an issue.

were you able to even perform a install of xp all the way or did it stop at a certain point?

 

[cydonia]

It does not even go into the screen "press any key to boot from cd" or whatever.

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: Foadbot
i believe that in windows xp you need to boot to the recovery console and use fixmbr and not fdisk /mbr , also the fact that the first partition is probably marked active still and as the boot /system parititon might be an issue.

were you able to even perform a install of xp all the way or did it stop at a certain point?

fdisk /mbr will work with WinXP.

OP, when your computer boots up press F8 until the selection menu pops up. Select DOS Prompt (or whatever the option is called).

 

[cydonia]

holding down f8 seems to go into menu to select which device to boot from...