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Dave Hardenbrook
Guest
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 Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:53 am Post subject: PC won't boot from CD-ROM |
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While the drama about my client's crashed HDD continues, another problem
from another client has cropped up:
She has a PC running XP SP2, and the system seems to be crashing/locking
up very often. This is one of my "long distance" clients, so I can't
look at her physical system, but she thinks the problem is software-
related and wants to do a clean re-install of XP on the volume
containing her current install. The thing is, for some reason her
system refuses to boot from the CD-ROM drive, even when it is specified
in the boot order in CMOS.
My questions are:
1. Could the system ignoring the CD-ROM in the boot order indicate a
failing CMOS battery, even if the classic symptom, not retaining
date/time, is absent?
2. Without being able to auto-start, is there a way to force the XP
installer to follow the entire clean install sequence, including the
disk partitioning phase, as though the hard disk were blank? (My client
complains that it keeps wanting to just install on top of her existing
XP installation.)
--
Dave |
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dav
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:14 am Post subject: Re: PC won't boot from CD-ROM |
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Hi dave,
Answer 1: No
Answer 2: Get your client to download any boot diskette
program/utilities disk which contains Fdisk. run the program to create
the bootable floppy. Boot from the floopy, run fdisk and delete the
existing (non DOS) partition. Then boot from the Cd ROM and XP disk
will partition and format the drive, and auto install XP.
Dav
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:53:28 GMT, Dave Hardenbrook
<daveh47NOSPAM@mindspring.com> wrote:
| Quote: | While the drama about my client's crashed HDD continues, another problem
from another client has cropped up:
She has a PC running XP SP2, and the system seems to be crashing/locking
up very often. This is one of my "long distance" clients, so I can't
look at her physical system, but she thinks the problem is software-
related and wants to do a clean re-install of XP on the volume
containing her current install. The thing is, for some reason her
system refuses to boot from the CD-ROM drive, even when it is specified
in the boot order in CMOS.
My questions are:
1. Could the system ignoring the CD-ROM in the boot order indicate a
failing CMOS battery, even if the classic symptom, not retaining
date/time, is absent?
2. Without being able to auto-start, is there a way to force the XP
installer to follow the entire clean install sequence, including the
disk partitioning phase, as though the hard disk were blank? (My client
complains that it keeps wanting to just install on top of her existing
XP installation.) |
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Dave Hardenbrook
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:58 am Post subject: Re: PC won't boot from CD-ROM |
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In article <ZG53Z43F38972.3257060185@twistycreek.com>,
anon@comments.header says...
| Quote: |
Except his client can't boot from the cd-rom. From the boot diskette, access
the cd drive and run winnt.exe for fresh installs (winnt32.exe is run from
within windows and is for upgrades / installs on top of etc.) It may work
without first needing to use fdisk to delete the existing partition; it's been
a while since I did it, so my memory is hazy.
|
As a trial run, I tried this on a system I have for "guinea pig"
purposes -- It gave me an error saying that no partitions exist with
suffient free space for Temp files, even though there was one with over
3GB free (???). Then I tried deleting the active partitin with FDisk,
in the naive hope that WINNT.EXE would just say, "Oh, okay, no active
partition -- I'll help the user create one". Instead, it blithely
copied the Temp files to the first partition that still existed... And
then hung.
My conclusion: WINNT.EXE is just not smart enough to deal with
installing XP on drives that already have stuff on them... To help my
client, I have to figure out what actually gets run when the CD-ROM
first boots. (How does one determine that...? Do CD-ROMs have MBRs and
can they be read? Is there a CD equivalent to AUTOEXEC.BAT??)
Any thoughts/ideas??
--
Dave |
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mbernal99
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 12:49 am Post subject: Re: PC won't boot from CD-ROM |
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Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
| Quote: | Well, as it often the case, the solution to the problem was something
simple, but difficult to spot when you don't have access to the physical
machine. It turns out that my client uses a USB keyboard, but her BIOS
doesn't recognize USB devices from real mode, so when she was prompted
to "Press any key to boot from CD", it wasn't responding.
But thanks for your feedback. It will be good info to have for the
future.
--
Dave
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Hahahaha I have run into this problem with my clients too. My boss
calls them "You can't starting rowing the boat without the oars first!"
problem.
Marco |
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Dale
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 5:40 am Post subject: Re: PC won't boot from CD-ROM |
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Apologies for the belated reply. I have just seen this.
Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
| Quote: | While the drama about my client's crashed HDD continues, another problem
from another client has cropped up:
She has a PC running XP SP2, and the system seems to be crashing/locking
up very often. This is one of my "long distance" clients, so I can't
look at her physical system, but she thinks the problem is software-
related and wants to do a clean re-install of XP on the volume
containing her current install. The thing is, for some reason her
system refuses to boot from the CD-ROM drive, even when it is specified
in the boot order in CMOS.
My questions are:
1. Could the system ignoring the CD-ROM in the boot order indicate a
failing CMOS battery, even if the classic symptom, not retaining
date/time, is absent?
|
Possibly not. Last week, I had to reinstall XP on some machines for a
client and had the same problem as you. It turned out that, in addition to
one BIOS option selecting the boot order, there was another that disabled
booting from removable media (eg CDROMS). They were HP machines. Could
this be the problem?
| Quote: | 2. Without being able to auto-start, is there a way to force the XP
installer to follow the entire clean install sequence, including the
disk partitioning phase, as though the hard disk were blank? (My client
complains that it keeps wanting to just install on top of her existing
XP installation.)
--
Dave
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Regards,
Dale |
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