Windows XP boot/disc help

Right looking for a bit of info really, been given a pc to try and sort.

User reported that windows would not boot, after setting it up this was indeed correct, i was presented with nothing but a blank screen. Thought fine ill reinstall windows only the windows xp disc would not load, it loads all the drivers etc fine but refuses to come to the main menu.

First thought was the HD is trashed, after running seatools on it failed after 3% checking with 100 errors, so i took the HD out stuck it in another pc and managed to get most the files off the disc, tool reported 6 corrupt files and 1111 read errors, ive since low level formatted the drive and re ran seatools which returns 100% with no errors and smart is not tripped.

Thought fine time to reinstall windows, placed drive into old pc booted up the windows xp disc only to be presented with the exact same issue, the disc will not load up it simply hangs at starting windows setup.

Im starting to get seriously peved with it in all honesty.

Any ideas greatly appreciated..

 

Any drive that failed seatools has no business going back in your computer--even if a low level format brought it back to life. I wouldn't trust it.

That said, you told us nothing about the computer or the drive. It could be the drive failing again, or it could be that it's a sata drive and you didn't load the needed drivers for the controller.

Without more information, that is the best I can offer

 

Computer is a custom built Athlon setup, 512mb ram, 5200FX gfx card.

The HD is a ATA133 Maxtor 80gb, the computer runs 2 disc drives a DVD and CD.

Ran Memtest for a pass on the ram and it returns no errors, though it could be do with being ran for longer.

HD is set on cable select and shows up fine as the master drive with no issues their.

Tbh its got me stumped.. the person im doing it for does not really wish to spend any money and i want to re-use the drive if possible.

Thx Mike

 

Ditch cable select. Set the drive as a master on its own controller/cable (put CD/DVD on other controller)

Same or different result?

 

Right ill give that a bash when i get in tonight..and post the results.

 

Right, pulled another 120gig HD out of another PC which is blank and placed it in the broken one, its on the primary cable set as master with the 2 CD/DVD drives on the slave cable.

Windows XP CD still refuses to load and hangs on starting windows setup, exactly as it did with the previous HD. Have retested the CD in my laptop and it loads without issues.

Have also reset the bios to default settings and set the CD rom as the first boot device.

Im at a complete loss and considering throwing it at the wall...

Any more ideas appreciated..

 

there is no slave cable.

there is a primary and secondary controller, each controller then takes a master and slave drive,

I wanted to isolate the harddrive jumpered as a master (or single--may be different pins) with nothing else because in rare cases I have had cd-roms not play nice with harddrives.

If a 80-wire cable, put the harddrive on the end with the jumper set to single or master; if 40-wire cable (well, if 40 wire, throw it out, your killing your performance) put it in the middle.

You probably did this--just checking.

Now we need to know your motherboard model and harddrive model would be helpful.

Also, when booting, you don't have a flash drive in, do you (take it out)?

 

Finally managed to get it to run by pressing F5 and booting a different HAL.

I appreciate all the help though gerry.

 

So, this was an ahci issue?

 

Yer in the end it was down to that, i tried what you suggested and was still no better off, even tried running it from a external cd USB drive to be fraught with the same issues. So sat trolling google and came across a article about it loading the incorrect HAL and to press F5 when presented with the F6 load third party drivers option. Loaded it as a APCI system and not a standard system and it worked..