[Yogi]

Methinks my 'desktop' has crashed! Last night all was working normal, I did a normal shutdown. Today when I booted up I got the above message and thats as far as it goes.
I'm running windows xp pro.
Anyone got any helpful ideas as to what I can do to restore my system? Thanks

[Scape]

That's a very bad error. If you haven't already back up what you can. You may need to do a new install but this could be a hardware problem. How old is the hard drive and motherboard? Is the fan making noise?

[Yogi]

No 'noises' of any kind. Complete system is just over 2 yrs old.
I do have some info backed-up but of course not everything.

Her is complete message;

Searching for Boot Record from CDROM..Not Found
Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..OK
Error loading operating system_

[BartSimpson]

Sounds like you might have a CD in your CD drive and your system is set to boot to CD.

Remove the CD in that drive and try again.

[Yogi]

I had, in fact, left a disc in the cd rom. Removing it didn/t fix the problem Bart. Any other ideas? I guess I have nothing to lose at this point!

[Scape]

Good news... you info should be fine.

Bad news... The OS is FUBAR

You can attach your hard drive to another computer with a running os and copy your files. Then format and reinstall.

[BartSimpson]

Yes, when starting the machine press F2 to get to the boot options.

>>>UNLESS you have a Dell, if so press F12 to run the onboard diagnostics. <<<

F2 will get you to the BIOS menu. Make sure your Hard Drive (HDD) is selected for the primary boot choice. If not, select it and then save the settings. Reboot.

If that does not work, then slave the HDD to a working HDD and you can use
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ to recover your data.

[PluggyRug]

Did you try F8 at startup then select "Last Known Good Configuration"

or Do you have a recovery disk to use with the OS cd?

[romanP]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Yes, when starting the machine press F2 to get to the boot options.

>>>UNLESS you have a Dell, if so press F12 to run the onboard diagnostics. <<<

F2 will get you to the BIOS menu. Make sure your Hard Drive (HDD) is selected for the primary boot choice. If not, select it and then save the settings. Reboot.

If that does not work, then slave the HDD to a working HDD and you can use
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ to recover your data.

Or, if you have a real computer, hit the Delete key when your BIOS POST screen comes up to bring up your BIOS menu.

Personally, I recommend getting the latest Linux Knoppix image onto a CD and booting from that to get your stuff off the hard drive. Then format the hard drive and reinstall Windows, cause once Windows is doing what's been described, it's usually fucked beyond repair.

[Yogi]

Nothing happens when I press F8 and I'm not really sure about 'my' abilities to follow the advice given by Bart and Scape. I think I'll have to get someone on the phone to 'walk me thru it or else bring it in. I don't want to do anything that will make it worse. Or is that possible?

[PluggyRug]

Yogi Yogi:

Nothing happens when I press F8 and I'm not really sure about 'my' abilities to follow the advice given by Bart and Scape. I think I'll have to get someone on the phone to 'walk me thru it or else bring it in. I don't want to do anything that will make it worse. Or is that possible?

Press reset..Start tapping the F8 key immediately after the first message appears on the screen.

[BartSimpson]

Yogi Yogi:

Nothing happens when I press F8 and I'm not really sure about 'my' abilities to follow the advice given by Bart and Scape. I think I'll have to get someone on the phone to 'walk me thru it or else bring it in. I don't want to do anything that will make it worse. Or is that possible?

Yes, you can take it from recoverable to unrecoverable.

If you don't feel confident doing this yourself then, by all means, take it to someone whom you feel confident can bring it back up.

For the record, I do not believe it is unrecoverable.

[Zipperfish]

Put the machine back in the box it came in and take it back to the store. When they ask you why you are returning it, tell them you are too stupid to own a computer.

Just joking

Oldie but a goldie.

ha ha ha

PS: try tapping the F2 key wiht the little toe of your right foot while using your thumb and pinky to simultaneously depress the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys. If that doesn't work, try waving a dead chicken over it.

[Regina]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Put the machine back in the box it came in and take it back to the store. When they ask you why you are returning it, tell them you are too stupid to own a computer.

Just joking

Oldie but a goldie.

ha ha ha

[Scape]

Well the bios is working so if you have a boot cd you can use that to get the system running.I think your HD is dyin and it could be a header crash or it simply could be the OS just got corrupted. That can happen from time to time usually caused by power spikes. If it is a header crash then the HD is not long for this world and getting the info off is the priority as reforrmating will only end up with the same problem again. The easiest way to do that is to hook up the HD to another system as a slave and it should read it fine and you can also format it all in one go. Then remount it and do a full reinstall.