Boot failure: System halted

[swee'pea99]

Curioser and curiouser...

Ok, I'm in BIOS. If I go to the Advanced tab, and poke around a bit, I can see the HD listed: Maxtor whatever it is.

But when I go to the Boot tab, it doesn't appear as one of the options. The Boot tab screen says, simply:

1st boot device [Removable device]

If I 'enter' on the [Removable device], it brings up one other option:

[Disabled]

So all told that screen offers:

1st boot device [Removable device]
[Disabled]

No sign of Boot from HD or from CD (tho' in the 'Advanced' tab I mentioned earlier, it also names the CD drive - Hitachi whatever it is).

As ever, your thoughts appreciated.

 

[rh100]

Instead of pressing Enter - what happens if you press the spacebar instead?

You mentioned earlier you could not hear the disk, can you feel any vibration from it? It sounds more and more like a faulty disk now - but unusual that the BIOS can ID it - unless it is remembering it maybe.

I'm out of ideas I'm afraid - short of bunging a spare drive on and seeing if that gets recognized.

 

[swee'pea99]

The plot thickens! (Or at least, murkens up a bit....)

The boot order menu has rediscovered the HD and the CD rom! But they appear in this order:

1st device: removable device
2nd device: Hard Drive
3rd device: CD-Rom

And there's nothing in the right hand bar to suggest any way to change that order. (I've googled and found references to using + and - to 'promote' devices, but the page warned that different Bioses differ, and on mine, there are no instructions, nor any apparent way to change the order. I had thought tho', again from googling, that if it can't find anything that enables booting from the 1st device, it will try the second, and so on. But this doesn't seem to. It just gets as far as the screen with

Hit <F12> if you want to see a boot menu (if you do hit F12, nothing happens)

at the bottom. And stops. And stays there indefinitely.

You can - as it says - hit Del to go into the setup menu. But nothing you do there seems to enable it to get past that first hurdle, and boot.

Does removable device include memory sticks? Might it be worth getting hold of a 1mb memory stick, burning the recovery CD to it, and starting up with it in a USB slot?

Thanks for sticking with me...

 

[swee'pea99]

[quote name='swee'pea99']Update...

I tried using + and - to 'promote' devices, and it succeeded. So I now can select CD-Rom or HD as 1st boot device, but either way, it makes no difference. It just will not boot. Just gets to the

Hit <F12> if you want to see a boot menu

screen. And stops. And stays there indefinitely.

You can - as it says - hit Del to go into the setup menu. But nothing you do there seems to enable it to get past that first hurdle, and boot.
[/QUOTE]
Gnash gnash...

 

[accountantpete]

Is there any mention of your HDD having S.M.A.R.T.?

If so within the BIOS there should be a HDD monitoring report which should give the condition of the drive.

 

[swee'pea99]

There isn't, no. I can't swear to it, but I think the drive's ok (I just got it off ebay).

Is there any significance in the fact that when it appears on the screen with

Hit <F12> if you want to see a boot menu

it's listed as

Fixed Disk 0: Maxtor 6E040L0

I was wondering about the 0 before the :

???

 

[SavageHoutkop]

then[/I] a CD rom (BTW you might want to swap those so that (eg) you can boot off of a recovery CD or live CD)

 

[SavageHoutkop]

Let's start at the beginning.
The computer is not finding anything to boot off of.

*does the hard drive currently plugged into the PC have a working installation of an operating system on it? If not, the PC will not boot

*will the PC boot off of a live CD or live USB? (once you've changed your boot order so that CD is above HDD, and/or unplugged the HDD)
see eg http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download
or, if you have one, your Windows disc

 

[swee'pea99]

Let's start at the beginning.
The computer is not finding anything to boot off of.

*does the hard drive currently plugged into the PC have a working installation of an operating system on it? Not sure. I think so, but I'm not sure. If not, the PC will not boot

*will the PC boot off of a live CD or live USB? No. I've put the recovery CD into the CD drive and put the CD at the top of the boot order list, but no joy. (once you've changed your boot order so that CD is above HDD, and/or unplugged the HDD)
see eg http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download
or, if you have one, your Windows disc

.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

which recovery cd - which OS? Windows 7 / Vista / XP?

 

[rh100]

Changing Boot Sequence for Future Boots

1. <LI value=1>Enter system setup.
   
2. Use the arrow keys to highlight the Boot Sequence menu option and press <Enter> to access the pop-up menu.

NOTE: Write down your current boot sequence in case you want to restore it.

1. Press the up- and down-arrow keys to move through the list of devices.
   
   Press the spacebar to enable or disable a device (enabled devices have a checkmark).
   
2. Press plus (+) or minus (–) to move a selected device up or down the list.

 

[rh100]

[quote name='swee'pea99']There isn't, no. I can't swear to it, but I think the drive's ok (I just got it off ebay).

Is there any significance in the fact that when it appears on the screen with

Hit <F12> if you want to see a boot menu

it's listed as

Fixed Disk 0: Maxtor 6E040L0

I was wondering about the 0 before the :

???[/QUOTE]

Don't worry about the 0, computers count from and including 0. Eg 0 1 2 3 instead of 1 2 3 4.

 

[swee'pea99]

which recovery cd - which OS? Windows 7 / Vista / XP?

Hi

Sorry, been out. Thanks for getting back to me. The recovery/OS disc that came with the PC - a Dell Windows XP CD. I startup with it in the CD drive, and CD at the top of the boot order list in BIOS, and....nothing happens.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

[quote name='swee'pea99']I startup with it in the CD drive, and CD at the top of the boot order list in BIOS, and....nothing happens. [/QUOTE]

Sure the CD is at the top of the BIOS order (i.e. you 'saved changes' or whatever when exiting the BIOS?)

If so, does the CD drive attempt to 'whirr to life' or is there really 'nothing'?

(anyone with better knowledge than I want to comment on master / slave jumper settings required for boot order?)

 

[swee'pea99]

Major progress! I downloaded the ubuntu (thanks SavageHoutkop) and amazingly managed to get it to run and instal. So I now have a fully working pooter running ubuntu. Fantastic! Apart from anything else, it proves (touch wood) the hardware is sound. Two oddities...

First, it found a full installed version of Windows XP on the drive. Like I said, I got it off ebay, and I thought XP was on it, tho' I wasn't sure. It asked whether I wanted on
restart to be given the option of going for ubuntu or windows, and I said yes.

When I restarted, sure enough it gave a list of options - ubuntu was the default, but XP was there. So I highlighted XP and...screen went black, ended up with a cursor-blink, top left corner of the screen, blink, blink, blink etc....

Restart. Go into ubuntu. All is well. Put in the Dell XP recovery disc. Icon appears on desktop. Double-click on it. Whirr whirr, then a wee window appears, bearing the following:

Archive: /media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE

[/media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE]

End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not

a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the

latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on

the last disk(s) of this archive.

note: /media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE may be a plain executable, not an archive

zipinfo: cannot find zipfile directory in one of /media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE or

/media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE.zip, and cannot find /media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE.ZIP, period.

...and that's that. The instal won't run. Does that mean anything to anyone? Is there anything I can do about it?

Ubuntu looks good, and I know it has some big fans...but TBH I'd prefer to be able to just get on with stuff in Windows for the moment - the devil you know and all that...