WinXP Pro will ONLY boot from CD 2

[Jenke]

anyone seen this one before? its got me completely baffled..
i did a fresh install of XP and as soon as i reboot i get the error message:
Boot from cd:
Boot Disk Error: Insert System Disk and Press Enter to continue

so i put the XP cd back in and it boots up fine..
ran every test i could think of on the HD, all came back with no errors..
reformatted, and deleted the 20gb and 60gb partitions i had, and made one 80gb partition..

same thing

interesting note is that when i decided to boot up a win98 cd and fdisk/format again, i hit enter to boot from hard drive and it booted in..
it will work consistently if there is a cd in the drive that has an OS on it, but it will not boot to an OS on its own..

tried specifying HDD0, HDD1, HDD2 in the boot order thinking it was trying to go to CD first and not getting to the HD, but no dice..

any suggestions??

 

[Jenke]

sounds like a corrupt registry to me..

first thing i would do is try to restore it using the recovery console.. hopefully it made a good copy on the installation.. check

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545&Product=winxp

for info on restoring corrupt registry..

faiing that, i would reinstall XP Pro to a 2nd location.. ie C:\Windows2 or something along those lines.. be sure not to format the drive though so you dont lose anything..
Assuming that installation was successful, I would then go in and use something like partition magic pro to make a 10 or 15Gb partition on the drive, then do a full ghost backup to that partition.. if it was 15 cds thats only about 10Gb of data.. once you have tested the backup and made sure you can access it via ghost explorer or something, then id do a reinstall over the XP installation on C:, only this time, doing a full format on the drive..

install as normal, then fire up ghost explorer, extract all the info you need from your backup to the working installation, then either burn your backup to cds/dvds, then you can blow away the 2nd partition

could be a little time consuming, but should ensure that you dont lose anything in the process..

hope this helps.

J

 

[rudyz]

Thanks Jenke, the article from Microsoft got me back to a normal desktop. I think I can mangage to try another back up with Ghost and take it from there. You saved me!!!!

 

[thomcom]

Do you have a zip drive or any external USB drives hooked up. If so disconnect them. Fdisk hard drive. Reinstall Windows pay particular attention to your drive letter. It should be "c" If it is any other letter. There is your problem.Check your BIOS settings You may have your hard drive & cdroom in reverse order. Hard should be the Primary Master. Give this a try

Donald A.Thompson

http://www.thomcomctr.com