Hard Drive Question?

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what Harry said ^^

As it is a copy CD, it may not have been copied properly and the files that make it bootable aren't there.

Vista comes on *DVD* there is every possibilty according to the spec that the PC in question only has a CD ROM drive. And Vista wont run on that box as the specs are way too low.

 

Have a go at disabling the hard drive completely, and connecting the cd drive to primary IDE device, checking the jumper settings on the cd drive are "master". and just see if the CD attempts to boot that time. It sounds weird, but ive had a few xp installation issues, where it refused to boot from the disc, until I connected the CD drive to Primary and "master".

Just googling your machine, and it seems more update than the advanced toaster I have to use, and XP runs fine on that, so you shouldnt have issues


And as Sparky said previously have a go at going through safe mode and logging in as admin...........also perhaps advise your work colleagues, they should probably wipe the drives clean before deciding to throw away future computers, just to be on the safe side, from any recoverable data which is on the drives.....

 

Hi Guys,

I have tried all suggestions and nothing seems to be working. I cannot seem to log in to windows 2000, the computer keeps booting into windows 2000, if i try to boot from the cd drive i keep getting asked to press f1 to retry boot. I have changed cmos settings and jumpers and primary and secondry conections. If i have a faulty controller like someone suggested then would mean a new motherboard or am i wrong? But thanks for all suggestions and input. I am a bit lost at the moment, would it be better for me to buy a working cheap computer off ebay to play around with?


Regards.

 

You could probably remove the password to at least get into the OS, from there do an upgrade possibly? This way you could boot possibly from floppy with the disk, reset the password, get into OS and do an upgrade then remove all other profiles and start fresh, well - near fresh.


This is what I use at work, use at own risk and virus scan as i take no responsibility.

 

According to the specs that were linked to in this thread this machine has a floppy drive. Have you tried to boot with a bootable floppy?

In some extreme cases where I couldn't get anything else to work I have used a program, small enought to fit on a floppy, called 'slate' to zero out the first sectors of the hard drive.

I seem to remember there were options on some Dells to defeat the 'change boot order' option. I am wondering if this has been done here.

Harry.

 

Hi,

Sorry for no update for a bit i have been away, i tried all suggestions and nothing worked so i decided to get my self a proper version of XP Pro and it seems to be working!

Lesson learned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Cheers!!!!!!!

 

Good job, dodgy copies are only going to cause problems. Keep it legit Glad to hear things are working now!