Hey guys.

So I am trying to fix a friends computer here, and I am stumped. Need some advice.

1) Their hard drive went kaput. I took it out and put in a new one.
2) Installed Win XP disk, did its thing. Said it needed to restart, take out CD and then you'd boot windows right?
3) Restarted, then get the "Boot disk error, put in boot disk and press enter."

BIOS recognizes the new drive, its the only one in there. I went to the Win Recovery Console, Windows is in there and installed.

I did fixboot and fixmbr. I think my next thing is to open boot.ini and see if its pointing to the correct windows folder? I dont know? What do I do? Any ideas?

 

I'm sure you probably have done this, since it's obvious. But usually I would only get that error when it was trying to boot Windows from a drive that Windows was not installed on. For example, if there's a floppy disk sitting in the drive still, if "boot up floppy seek" is enabled in the BIOS, and there's a disk in there, you'll get that error. Check that first. You could also check if there is any flash drive (USB disk) or some other external device that has memory of any sort that might be plugged into it (like a camera). It sounds dumb, but I have come across cases where my friends computers wouldn't boot after a format simply because the BIOS somehow thought that a 512MB flash drive was the boot drive.

EDIT: If there are multiple partitions, there might be an error in the partitioning table, but I doubt it. In which case, format again...I find that's easier than trying to repair a corrupt partitioning table, at least when there is nothing I have to lose.

 

The first time XP reboots it want's the CD in the drive.

 

Yeah, that too. But only when it reboots after the blue screen install, after the graphical install, it shouldn't need it.

 

make sure you don't have a floppy disk or such type of removable bootable drive connected

You would be surprised how many people reformat and reinstall windows only to find they left a floppy in the drive.

 

All good replys, check the bios (disable the "A or "B" from the boot sequence temporarily), check any periferals and temporarily remove them (photo printers too), check and remove any additional disks or cd/dvd's (you can leave the install cd/dvd in until setup is complete). If all the above doesn't work reformat, partion and re-run setup is the best bet, repairing a disk on a new install is just asking for problems down the road. This is just a recap on good advise.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. There are flash drives in this computer, but, nothing actually installed on them. I'll disconnect them from the MB though. I also disabled all bootable drives except the hard drive. Hmmph.

Well, after the blue screen install, it says to remove the disk from the computer! Should I leave it in?!! I'll try that too

Thanks agian.

 

Ugh. Still nothing.

Blue screen install is working. I restart, and nothing happends. Windows does not load.

 

Sounds like the bios settings are not telling it to boot from the drive. Then it can't find any drive to boot from and give boot errors.

 

Bios is setup correctly, well, I think?

It boots first from CD then HD. EVerything else is disabled.

 

how old is the machine?

my sony desktop refuses to boot from HD > 128GB.

i'm just waiting for this to blow up before i wasnna replace it...

 

Leave the install CD/DVD in the drive after the bluescreen install, then remove it after the graphical install. If nothing still works, try doing a full format again, not just the "quick" format. The quick format only rewrites the partition tables, the full format writes 0's on the entire drive. Other than that, I dunno, the BIOS could just be unhappy with the new drive. Do you have another hard drive you could swap in and try that with?

 

The machine is about 3 years old. Wow. The harddrive is 160 gig, I wonder if that causing the problem!? But, I can see that the windows folder is installed, using the recovery feature using the XP CD.

Well I think I might have an extra hard drive actually. I'll try that first.

 

I'll just throw a quick one out there. What are the jumper settings on the new drive? it should be master.

 

I finally got it working. I think it was that the new hard drive was TOO BIG to be recognized by the bios, or something...

I put in a super old HD, installed windows on it, and it booted right up!! So, I just put the new hard drive as a slave, and now its just going to be the data disk, and Windows is loaded on the old one.

Thanks for the help guys!!