Failure to Boot

Hello Everybody,
Yesterday, I pluged in my new USB external hard drive enclosure. Win.XP Pro showed new hardware found. My Logetich USB mouse was froze. Had a cursor on the screen, and a red light on in the mouse. Disconnected the External drive, had to shut the computer down. Tried to boot up. Gets to Win. XP splash screen and stops. Tried to restart using F8 to get in safe mode. Got Win. advance options menu. Picked Last Known Good Configuration. Booted right up. Now, it is the only way I can boot up.This morning, I ran all my Virus and Parisite programs. Just to make sure. My AVG virus program found no Virus, but showed 2 changes.
Partition Table (MBR) Changed
Boot Sector of Disk C: Changed
Any help with this problem, greatly appreciated.

 

Hello Coyote,

Try fixing the MBR with the Recovery Console. You'll need the XP cd for this:

To start the Recovery Console from the Windows CD, follow these steps:

Insert the Windows CD and restart your computer. Follow your computer’s prompts to start from the CD. (You may need to adjust settings in the computer’s BIOS to enable the option to start from a CD.)

Follow the setup prompts to load the basic Windows startup files. At the Welcome To Setup screen, press R to start the Recovery Console.

When prompted, type the Administrator password.

At the command prompt, enter Recovery Console commands directly. Typing help will list all the available commands.

The command for you to enter:
Fixmbr
Repairs the Master Boot Record of the specified disk, usually the System partition.

Regards - Charles

 

Hello Charles,
I cannot get the computer to boot from the CD. Went into the BIOS, changed the Bootup settings to #1 CDROM #2 HDD0 #3 Floppy. On restart, boots into Windows. Open My Computer, it shows WinXP Pro in the CDROM. Is there any other way to get to the Recovery Console?

SOYO SY-K7V Dragon Plus
AMD Athlon XP 1.25GHz
768 MB Ram
Win. XP Pro Service Pack2

 

Hi Coyote,

Just to make sure that restart = bootup.

Put the cd into the drive, shut the system down, then start the system.

Regards - Charles

 

Ahhh,
During startup you may have to watch the screen carefully for "Boot to CDrom ", if you don't press Enter (it be another key or any of the keys), it will continue to boot through to the hard drive.

Matt