Computer Help Please!

D

Danelle O'Shea

Joined
Mar 22, 2001
Messages
2,420
Sorry if this doesn't belong in community..feel free to move it to a more appropriate area.

My son got a used computer and we are having big time trouble.

Apparently it used to be part of a network, and now it keeps trying to boot from the network drive. I've changed the options in the BIOS to tell it to boot from the CD (Windows XP CD, which is what was originally loaded on it) but when it starts booting it goes to a screen that says to pick an option, which is
1. Disable network boot
2. Boot from network blahblah
3. Boot from network 18 blahblah
4. Boot from Network18/19 blahblah

Obviously the option I want is 1 but it wont register a number when I type it. It won't let me type an option in the cursor spot at all. No keyboard key works there. The keyboard otherwise works fine. It is a USB keyboard.

The computer will not boot up at all. I have fuzzy digital pictures of each screen if that's necessary but I'm hoping someone just recognizes what's wrong and can talk me through it or something..

Anyone?
 
Hmm, sounds like boot manager is present. As for USB keyboard - try PS/2 keyboard. USB devices may not be supported in the boot manager.

You can try to plug HDD from this computer to another one and use some partition manager to get rid of everything is present on the HDD drive.


EDIT: WinXP has it's own bootloader, try to load partition manager, format whole disk, get rid of logical partitions, if still not accessible, try "fdisk /mbr" command which should restore master boot record of the drive.
 
Depending on the maker and version of the BIOS, USB devices either are disabled or not recognized. I will add another vote for the PS/2 keyboard. If you don't have one, look in the box for the last USB keyboard/mouse you purchased. There was probably a PS/2 converter included. :thumbup:

David
 
A USB keyboard is the only option, the pins for the keyboard connection on the back of the pc are broken. The USB keyboard works otherwise, as I have used it to change settings in the BIOS. Would it work in the BIOS and not in the boot?
 
In that case, go into your BIOS and make sure the pre-OS USB support is turned on.
Beyond that, sorry to say but I'm not sure... :(

David
 
Danelle O'Shea said:
A USB keyboard is the only option, the pins for the keyboard connection on the back of the pc are broken. The USB keyboard works otherwise, as I have used it to change settings in the BIOS. Would it work in the BIOS and not in the boot?
Click to expand...

It is possible.

Try to format the HDD (you can use another computer to do so)
 
Danelle O'Shea said:
the pins for the keyboard connection on the back of the pc are broken.
Click to expand...

*scratches head* The pins on the ps/2 port on the mother board are broken? How? Thats the female end.

Or are the pins connecting it to the mobo busted? Which is... odd. And relatively hard to do. They aren't super strong, but it's an odd place.

As others have said, look to see if you have pre-OS USB options, and make sure that the USB controller is on the mother board. If it is on an expansion card, good luck getting the BIOS to recognize it.

Another option is to see if you can find a Bart PE CD (or if you are a *nix fan, any bootable Linux). Can't gaurentee it will work, but....
 
There WAS an option in the BIOS to enable USB peripheral, which I did. (Thanks for that suggestion!)

The keyboard then let me pick option 1, to disable the network boot.

Now it goes from the BIOS screen to the Windows splash screen and back again. Over and over and over and over.
 
Sounds like you might need to redo your master boot record (MBR), or do a windows recovery. If you have a windows CD available, make sure you are set with CD as #1 boot device, boot from the CD, and try to run a recovery. If that doesn't work you might need to use the fdisk utility to repair your MBR, but that may nuke the data on that HDD.

David
 
I do have an XP CD in the drive, and have CD as the first boot device. The light comes on and the CD spins,but it just keeps going to those two screens and won't do anything else.

I'm fine with wiping the HD but I can't even get to that point.
 
Have you set bios back to defaults yet and tried that ?

You will probably have to re-detect the hard drive after that unless it is set up as "auto detect" in the bios.

Also what type of bios ( a name , 'award' etc) do you have ? Any idea on the age of the pc ?
Some bios are crap and difficult to work with others are very straight forward.

Also , silly question time but , does it even have a hard drive in it ??
 
Another idea might just be a new hard drive. They are cheap enough at this point.

And if the computer still gives you this trouble with a new HDD.... Yeah, it's got problems. At that point, at work, I'd either call the company and tell them to send me the cardboard coffin so I could send their gizmo back to them, or put it on the rack of stuff to be recycled.
 
You may want to try to boot with a Linux Live CD, these allow you to boot in a workable operating system even if you don't have a hard drive. I use Puppy Linux, version 2.14 has worked fine for me with old PCs (though I am typing this from version 2.16 installed in the 4GB hard drive of a 10 yer old Compaq PC), Puppy includes the GParted partition manager (Menu > System > GParted partition manager) which lets you format the hard disk. If you don't have a hard disk you can install Puppy Linux in a usb pendrive in which you can include a swap file and a save file to keep your configuration, files, new installed programs, etc. a 1GB pendrive works fine.

You can use Super Grub Disk to fix the MBR in a hard disk, you boot with the CD and choose options from the menus.

To use any of these you download the .iso image and burn it in a CD, in Windows I use CDBurnerXP Pro which is freeware.

Luis

Edited to mention Ubuntu Linux, which also comes in a Live CD but really works well when installed in the hard drive. I use version 7.04 in my main PC (dual boot with Windows XP). I have to say that I like it better than Windows.

Here's a screenshot of my Puppy Linux desktop (a picture is worth a thousand words), I reduced it to 640 X 480, actual size is 1024 X 768.


Click to enlarge
 
With some (mostly older) systems, in order to boot from a CD drive, the CD drive has to be set as the 1st boot device. In other words, if the CD drive is set as the second or third boot device it won't boot.
And being as the bios IS finding a way to boot from the hard drive (even though it doesn't actually work without being connected to the old network) it probably won't move on to the next boot device anyway.
Give booting from the CD drive another try after setting the CD drive as the first boot device in the bios.
 
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