Win2K won't start or boot from floppy/cd 1

[houstonfitz]

On starting, when the sys gets to the loading sequence the screen goes black. Then while attempting to boot from floppy (boots disks) or cd (win2000 pro) it reads "Setup is inspecting your system's hardware configuration" and hangs, does this on both the floopy and CD bot attempts. Then also attempting to boot from floppy (ERD disk) I can get an "A" prompt...but cannot prodceed from here.

The Mother board is a ECS K7S5A Pro.

I recently reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled W2K and the system ran fine for the last 2 months. I have not installed any new hardware or drivers. The problem began after shutting down the PC for the night and restarting it the next morning with no prior glitches noticed.

 

[jrbarnett]

Can you get in via safe mode (press F8 while the white progress bar goes across the screen)?

John

 

[houstonfitz]

No. It blips to the black screen before that page. It loads as far as the page that allows me to Del: setup F8: Boot etc....it does not make it to the loading page or I'd be able to go into Safe Mode. Thanks for responding

 

[houstonfitz]

FYI....I am using NTFS and not FAT32. Also...I have the latest Norton protections (daily) and run SPYBOT daily. I doubt it is a viral or other intrusive program affecting it.

I also have the recent boot disks (4), the ERD and a Bios Flash Floppy all made right after the reformat.

 

[jrbarnett]

If the Windows 2000 loader isn't starting up, then it is a hardware rather than Windows 2000 problem or any spyware or virus on the system.
Go into the CMOS setup by pressing DEL and check all the settings look reasonable for the installed hardware, and that the hard disk is recognised.
If they are all incorrect, the chances are quite considerable that the CMOS battery has died.

John

 

[houstonfitz]

John,

Thanks very much!! Might not of been exactly what you were alluding to, but in doing that it actually showed that the memory was not being shown. I moved the 512mg card over one slot and rebooted and it worked fine. Was actually a bad memory slot, or so it appears. Thanks again.

 

[ackee]

I recently loaded Windows 2000 Pro on my computer and it will not boot after what appears to be a successful installation. (I have loaded the OS three tiimes)

On powering up the PC, it boots and passes the POST. It also gets past the screen where I am allowed to press F8 to boot up in safe mode.

I then proceed to the splash screen where is hangs. Pressing F8 and selecting any of the options prior to the splash screen does not help me to get past the splash screen at which the blue progress bar is displayed before one is able to log in.

At the splash screen, there is no activity (blue dashed bar) reported on the progress bar, (it is blank). There also is no disk asctivity at this point.

I have used many disk utilities to diagnose any disk related problems, but they all report that I have no problems on my hard disk, nor the NTFS "bootable" file system. I have also disabled caching on my CPU and for video from my BIOS.

What could be the problem?

aljerones.

 

[jrbarnett]

aljerones

This is a separate issue. Please start a new thread in the forum.

John