Urgent HD boot problem

[ilubombadil]

My laptop a DELL inspiron with 256MB RAM and 30GB HD, plus a Samsung CD-RW, Windows XP installed.

It starts as normal but when try to load XP it says in a blip "NTDETECT failed".

I've tried to F8 in XP start menu but none of the options work. Also tried to boot from original XP CD-R and also from a bootable CD-R with recovery utilities with no luck, also tried disableng all bot devices from bios exept CD and it says "operating system not found".

Is there a way to fix this?, why it's not booting from CDROM even that it's first boot device or only boot device?.

Please help needed, my bst regards to you all, and hanks for the help.

 

[wolluf]

Is there any history to this? (eg, have you had a number of small problems, no problems leading up to this, have you changed any hardware/software, had a virus etc).

Also - tried diconnecting as many devices as possible & then try booting.

Eg, disconnect all sound/network/modem cards etc, printers, USB devices, CD/DVD drives, floppy & see if hard drive will boot. If not, disconnect hard drive & reconnect CD/DVD - see if it will boot from that.

Also - id 256MB is 2 sticks, try each on its own.

But some history clues would be useful.

 

[ilubombadil]

No no warning of any kind. It just started on cold boot and from there on no way to get into the system. Even through CD. Is a note book and I've tried taking the HD off and he memory too. The BIOS tells me that verithing is OK and recognized.

 

[wolluf]

Sounds like your bios may have become corrupted. Has it a floppy drive? If so, can you boot from that? If so, can you flash the bios?

 

[ilubombadil]

I've tried too with no luck to boot from floppy, it says also "operating system not found". The bios looks ok to me, it has recognized if I took out de HD and it looks fine.

 

[wolluf]

But the bios is what transfers control to the boot device - which is what appears to be not happening correctly for you - CD/floppy not booting at all, HD giving you an error message which suggests that one of XP's boot files (ntdetect.com) is not being loaded properly. This is what leads me to suspect that the bios has become corrupted (or there's a mobo hardware problem). Suspect you'll need a Dell specialist to sort this out (unless someone here has seen this). You might try forum602, as this is probably not a hard drive issue (more people on that forum too).

PS. If you buy an adaptor which allows laptop drives to be connected to PC (c. £5 here in UK), you could check out the drive.

 

[ilubombadil]

OK thanks guys, the problem was solved formating a CD with 1,44 FD format option and puting all the repair software and CD drivers. tehn first shortcircuit the mother board then booting and repairing de XP ntdetect, ntldr and making a new boot.ini.

pfffeeeeuuuuu.

Thak you all for your time and help. It was most valuable.

Best regards to you all.