Boot Problem

[jagape]

I'm using XP Pro on two puters. Neither will boot properly.
1. Gateway (5 years), will only boot using an XP disk. After the Gateway screen appears the screen goes blank for a few minutes, then the cursor shows. after that it shows the following:
"Reboot and select proper boot device
or insert boot media in selected boot device".
I have tried two different hard drives with XP Pro.
Could it be my Bios?

2. Thsi is a puter I built (1 year). When it boots up it shows the bios screen (i forget what it says) and the goes to the XP Pro screen where the bars move in the little box. It stays there for about 1-2 seconds then the puter reboots. I have tried two seperate hard drives here also.
Bios?

Is there a chance that I picked up a virus and spread it to both puters?

[CrowdAds]

[rjs735]

You well may have. Are you using a firewall, any antivirus software and adaware software. If not then you should. There are several site that allow online scanning for viruses.

If the answer is no then you need to download Zonealarm Free Ver 8 it is a free firewall. Download Adaware 2008 free version for adaware and spyware malware scanning. Also there is choice of Antivirus free versions
Avast. Avir, AVG. and now Kaspersky offers a free scan tool however it must be re downlaoded and installed as the free version doesn't have update to the signature files that are used to detect viruses.

The first system may well be a BIOS problems as you may have the CD selcetd as the first boot device. You need to selcet the HD as the first boot device.


The second system I would try booting to safe mode and see what the results are you may have a driver issue if so then the system should boot fine in safemode. Then take a look at the system manager and see if there are any device that have a yellow exclamation next to them or a red x and delete these. When you reboot the device will be found if they are on the system and will ask for you to supply the drivers or the install cd.

If it also fails then I would look at the bios.

BTW to see what's happenning behind the windows screen at boot time hit the esc key it will allow you to look at what in WIn95 was the boot screen.

Also if you start in safe mode you can elect step by step mode and you will have to respod to every cammane that the system initializes.

There is also the ability to create a boot log to look at to see when the system fails and at what point.

[jagape]

rjs735

Is there a way to boot in safe mode without that screen coming up?
I have checked the bios for boot sequence and HD is first.
Do you think that resetting the bios to default might help?

[rjs735]

If you boot and hit f8 key to get into sfaemode you should never see the screen because it will drop into a dos mode like screen. You will ahve to keep hitting the f8 key before the xp boot screen appears. If it appears you wil not go into safemode.

If you hit the xp screen you are trying to boot normally.

[Terry Reynolds]

Originally Posted by jagape

... 1. Gateway (5 years), ... I have tried two different hard drives with XP Pro. ...

... 2. Thsi is a puter I built (1 year) ... I have tried two seperate hard drives here also. ...

1) When you say you've tried two drives ... do I take it you are swapping the drives between the two computers?

2) Were the two networked? A boot-sector worm might have moved from one to the other.

3) Can you time something like a software install, hardware change, etc. to when the problem started occurring?

[jagape]

I got the Gateway going last night. I set the bios to default and that seemed to do the trick. Not sure why, I never changed it in the first place.
It boots OK now. I haven't had a chance to try the other yet.

The two were never networked, but there are two others that were connected to the Gateway and never experienced the problem. When the I-built puter went bad I put the hard drive from it in the Gateway to see if the problem went with it. I had run a repair on it before I swapped it and the repair did not work. When I placed it in the Gateway I started getting the "Boot Device" message.
I will try defaulting the I-built this evening. It acts diffenertly than the Gateway though. After it reaches the XP Boot Screen it restarts.

[rjs735]

Sounds like when you swapped the HD the gateway doesn't do a good job of auto detect and the swapped in HD may not have good boot sector. That would explain why the GAteway did not revert back to functioning.

So the scenario was I-built went south. You move a questionable HD to a working system it too goes south. That leaves the I-built system HD as a potential culprit. The gateway had the bios settings set for the GAteway HD. So when you when you swapped the Gateway Hd back in the bios for what ever reason never detected it properly ergo the resetting the BIOS to default fixed your problem there.

Now the I-built system needs a deeper look at the HD for a bad boot record etc. If you have any experience with some diags that boot of CDS like UBCD4WIN or even UBCD , CD911, these are bootable cd that have a number of diags for variou HDS as well partitioning software and other. Might the time to look into one of these or even the HD MFG website for diags for your brand of hd they all have them. These can be burned to a cd and will boot up and run from a dos window and give you good idea about the status of the HD.

I am happy you got one of the two running.