XP Home Boot

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

One of my clients has a pc (Dell Dimension) that requires the XP Installation
CD to be in the drive everytime it loads. If the cd is not in the drive it
will ask for a boot disk. If the cd is in the drive it loads Windows as it
normally should.

Anyone know any reason as to why this may be happening? I loaded MS
Anti-Spyware and ran a defrag on the hard drive.

Any assistance would be extremely helpful.

 

[map]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

"BWin" wrote:

> One of my clients has a pc (Dell Dimension) that requires the XP Installation
> CD to be in the drive everytime it loads. If the cd is not in the drive it
> will ask for a boot disk. If the cd is in the drive it loads Windows as it
> normally should.
>
> Anyone know any reason as to why this may be happening? I loaded MS
> Anti-Spyware and ran a defrag on the hard drive.
>
> Any assistance would be extremely helpful.

Boot into the BIO's (hit f2 several times when booting) and under the "boot
sequence" heading check to see if there is a checkmark next to the hard drive
listing.If not then enable it.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:37:05 -0800, "BWin"

>One of my clients has a pc (Dell Dimension) that requires the XP Installation
>CD to be in the drive everytime it loads. If the cd is not in the drive it
>will ask for a boot disk. If the cd is in the drive it loads Windows as it
>normally should.

>Anyone know any reason as to why this may be happening? I loaded MS
>Anti-Spyware and ran a defrag on the hard drive.

CD boot is bypassing some of the files used early in NT (XP) boot
process, so I'd look to problems there.

The first part of the boot process may use addressing modes that have
limited capacity, so that if files needed at that stage are too "far
up" the HD, they can't be addressed.

Or there may be pre-filesystem issues; no primary partition set as
active, wrong partition boot code is in effect, etc.

Answers to the following files may help...

What happens when you try a HD boot? Specifically, at what point does
the process fail, and what error messages show up?

What version of XP (Gold, Sp1, SP2) is this?

How big is the HD?

How big is C: volume?

Does Event Viewer AutoChk and ChkDsk events show any damage and
"fixing" of any core system files?

Do your av logs show any "cleaning" of any core files?

Have any Service Packs been applied?

Did anyone do a "repair install" of Windows? If so, what version of
XP over what version of XP installation?

What does your C:\BOOT.INI look like?

....but from the history, esp. if the defrag preceded the problem, I'd
guess an early XP that may have had core files pushed "up" the C:
volume by defrag. That effect is more common with patches that create
new versions of these files too far up the C:; hopefully Defrag is
smart enough not to mess up in this way.


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