I'm stupid: BIOS help needed

[Marshmallowman]

The f11 boot screen allows you to set a the boot device for the next boot only, so it sounds like you might have to examine the boot order in your bios. eg CDROM then correct HDD or HDD channel or just select the HDD only and use f11 to select cdrom for a reinstall.

Also make sure you don't have any usb memory keys inserted as they can screw up your boot(even if not enabled)

And XP came out in batchs so certain XP install media will only allow you to install certan ranges of CD keys, try alterative XP install CD's if you have them.
Is the CD key on the computer box?

Do you have the exact model number of the board?

[Brian Ellis]

Thanks, all!

Some answers and comments:

OK, I now understand the difference between the F11 and BIOS boot orders: I was unaware of that.

No, there is no CoA stuck on the box, because the original 'puter with it had rendered its soul many years ago, but the product key is noted. It was installed originally as the first OEM issue of XP and upgraded, in time, through the 3 SPs, using MS CD's, and subsequently updated. It is therefore quite likely that it is real bastard installation. The CD I was using is an official OEM SP3 version and I was trying to do a clean re-install with it (I have a new CoA which came with it).

The Mobo is ECS NF650iSLIT-A. The CPU is Core 2 6000 2.4 MHz with NVIDIA Chipset C55 NB and MCP1 SB with FSB at 1066 MHz, so it is not as ancient as the original XP!

It would seem the CMOS reset did allow the BIOS to get the graphics working. However, in BIOS, it was still PCI and I have changed that to PCIe. I suppose it has a PCI function for set-up purposes.

Update:
If I set the BIOS boot order to HDD first, with the appropriate boot partition, and THEN do the same with F11, it will boot up into the old Win XP.. Looking in Sandra, with PCI, it sees only a generic. With PCIe, it sees the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 8 PCI lanes (whatever that means!).

Anyway, I have found one fault which possibly explains the NTLDR problem. Sandra has detected the CD/DVD drive but says it is not present. I thought it was a SATA one, but it ain't, it's ATA running on IDE2 as slave (probably because the cable is not long enough for the master connector to reach it!). I put in a CD and it would not read it so it looks as if it may be fried, which explains a lot. I don't know whether I've got a spare drive, I'll look today.

Anyway, it looks as if I'm on my way to getting back to business, thanks to you.

[KRSESQ]

You'd have to pull out the dvd drive to do it, but you might try setting the jumper to cable select.

[Brian Ellis]

Just about done everything to confirm that the CD drive is faulty.

I removed the unit, set the jumper to Master and tried it in the master position on IDE1 and IDE2 cables and got NTLDR missing

I removed the SATA and IDE1 slave connections to all the HDDs except the newest one (this also disabled the C: partition) and disabled BIOS HDDs, leaving only CDROM to boot from

Repeated the first paragraph and got Disk Boot failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter on both IDE ports. Same selecting CDROM from F11. Same with another boot CD/DVD,

Ergo, either CDROM drive fried or, worse, Mobo broiled. Will try and find a new drive tomorrow (pref, SATA as I have 1 free SATA port).

[Umfriend]

Which confirms, to me, that your PC was always trying to boot from HDD. It's just not easy to get NTLDR missing msg while booting from CD/DVD.

[KRSESQ]

Typically on a mixed ata/sata system, it always assigns priority to the the ata channels (0,1) first and then sata(0,1,2,etc.). So often the system will be trying to boot from the primary ata channel first regardless of whether there's a bootable drive there or not.

If you're trying to boot from a standard factory xp disk with sp3, that should be a cd rather than a dvd. If yours won't boot from either an xp install cd or a windows 7 install dvd, then yeah, the drive may be out. You did say it got a lot of use.

(Always fix the cheapest thing first.)

[Brian Ellis]

OK, Everything now works. Problem was the CD/DVD ROM drive which was fried. Bought a new one which was SATA instead of ATA. Fortunately, I still had one free SATA port. I decided to simultaneously abandon an old ATA 30 Gby drive which was my old C: drive. No IDE now! I have 2 80 Gby SATA drives on which I installed Win XP and Win 7 respectively as a dual boot (Win 7 in virtual XP mode doesn't cut the ice). I have several video apps that don't run on Win 7 and one that doesn't run on XP, hence the dual boot. Still have to install all the apps.

Thanks!

[VJ]

One thing I experimented with was running the dual boot installations as a virtual machine inside the other. So in your situation, you would have the option at boot, but then when running Windows 7 you can run XP in a virtual machine and vice versa.
VMWare allows for this (advanced settings), and you need to configure multiple hardware platforms for the same windows installation. Upon boot of a windows, you have to select which hardware platform it is running on.
Main reason I bothered was that I wanted to experiment with it (find out if it was at all possible), and to always have access to all files. Main reason I abandoned it was that I didn't really use it much, didn't like to select the hardware platform on boot and file access can be solved by just mounting the partition anyway.

[Brian Ellis]

Prefer the dual boot. I've seen on forums that there are problems running one of my XP apps in Win7 virtual XP, so I'm playing safe. Of course, only Pro and Ultimate Win7 allow virtual XP. I have Pro in both XP and 7.