Can't boot from CD Drive

[alanbloom]

I'm running a network and had made a new Server 2003, almost fully set up to control the network and installed the software I needed. About ten minutes before I was going to clone the hard drive to act as a back up, the computer totally screwed... sod's law.

Suddenly, I got to a screen which said that Windows cannot start becaus the file "\windows\system32\config\system" is missing or corrupt. I can fix Windows by using the repair feature on the install CD, but here's where the problem now occurs:

Even though the BIOS is set to boot up from the CD drive, it will not attempt to access it. Obviously, it worked before in order to install the OS in the first place, but suddenly, there's nothing I can do to get it to boot from the CD drive - no bootable CD will even get looked at.

Bootable floppies will just allow Windows to start loading, only to reach the same error that the file is missing or corrupt. Can I use a different type of boot disk to load the CD?

 

[alanbloom]

I've tried to connect a different CD Drive, no luck. I'm made boot floppies which are meant to be able to access the CD Drive, and still no luck....

 

[itsp1965]

A couple of questions;
- Can you access the CD drive from within Windows (ie view the contents) or does it have problems reading CDs
- Although you have set to boot from CD, is the CD the first device in the boot order in your BIOS.

 

[alanbloom]

Yeah, the CD was the first drive in the Boot BIOS. For some reason it still would get looked at.

Fortunately, I remembered that I had an almost identical machine in the building, so I stripped the hard disc out and put it in the other machine. I was then able to boot from the CD on that computer - however, the recovery console did not work correctly as it just crashed. I haven't discounted the possiblity that the hard disc is physically damaged in some way, so I have decided to completely reinstall on a new clean drive and start again :-s

Thanks for the reply!