PC Pals Forum

Technical Help & Discussion => General Tech Discussion, News & Q&A => Topic started by: spooner on July 05, 2006, 13:36

Title: Boot up problem
Post by: spooner on July 05, 2006, 13:36

hi all,
i have a 2nd pc which isn`t connected to the internet, it runs on windows 2000, it has always booted up showing a dos page, which has never been a problem, now as it tries to boot up it shows the command,
searching for boot record from cd rom.......not found
searching for boot record from floppy.........ok
remove discs or other media
press any key to restart,

when you press a key, it shows the command,
searching for boot record from cd rom, with a flashing curser after it and thats it, it won`t go any further.
does anybody have any ideas ?
let me know please
cheers

Title: Boot up problem
Post by: Sandra on July 05, 2006, 13:41

Check the bios settings and make sure that its detecting the hard drive.

It sounds like the hard drive may have failed or is not being recognised by the bios.
Its definately not seeing the bootable partition on it as its looking for alternative boot devices.

It may be a corrupted MBR (master boot record), I am not sure if the same thing that XP has works in 2000 (the fix mbr command) but check the bios to start with.

Title: Boot up problem
Post by: spooner on July 05, 2006, 13:58

erm.... how do i do that sandra ?

Title: Boot up problem
Post by: Sandra on July 05, 2006, 14:08

Hit Del repeatedly as its booting up to go into the bios.
Some pcs have to use F2, it usually says on the first page which key you have to use but they usually cal it Setup.

Once you are in the bios there are different screens and one will have an option for detecting the drives.
Select that by highlighting it by using the keyboards arrow keys to scroll up and down the screen then press enter.

Unfortunately there are a few different makes and versions of bios so not all of them show the same information in the same place.

The first bios screen, usually called CMOS, often has a list of the installed drives.
Its usually best to set them to Auto rather than user defined.

If you do alter anything write down what the setting was before you altered it. in case you need to set it back to the original.

Once you alter something you have to select the save then exit option and the pc will reboot and hopefully find your boot drive.

Let me know if you dont understand any of the above or if you see something in the bios that you are unsure about.

Title: Boot up problem
Post by: spooner on July 05, 2006, 16:05

That worked, thanks a lot  :D

Title: Boot up problem
Post by: Sandra on July 06, 2006, 00:34

Pleased that you got sorted and now you know where the bios is as well  :)