XP Home will not boot

At this point you?ll have to try the following things:

a. Boot from windows Me diskette and launch fdisk. Answer Y and select option 4. Do you see any partition(s) there ?

b. Enter in BIOS and change the boot order so that the CDROM has a higher precedence than the HDD drive (save settings at exit). Insert the bootable CD and restart. Does it boot from the CD ? The purpose of the test is only to see if you can boot from CD. If it boots, just exit the procedure.

c. Regarding the CDs supplied by the brand name. You either ask them directly or dive in their?s support pages and gather the info regarding your model. Generally speaking, you shouldn?t need another windows XP. The only info that you should search for is if those CDs perform a destructive or non-distractive recovery.

As a collateral note, why you brand name buyers guys are coming here instead of going first to your product?s mother ? My assumptions are the following:

One comes here :

1. after contacting the brand name because they failed to solve it.

2. trying to avoid the paid phone call because the bought PC was without support (weak anyway).

3. gathering info and learning some things before the paid phone call.


Reasons:

#1 Save money for future parts and/or support.

#2 Save money hoping for a good resolution.

#3 Save time and money and for many of you ?time is money?, isn?t it ?


Good Luck,

Cetin


Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,

T. S. Eliot

You cannot run another reinstallation disk form another Dell computer.
Do you have any Linux partitions on the same harddrive that windows won't reconize? If so, you will need a third party program like partition magic to delete the linux partition. Dos partitions will see a linux partition as corrupt.You cannot delete a linux partition in fdisk. you would also need another hard drive working, to use this third party program. It will then see both harddrives and you can delete the linux partition. Don't delete any driver partitions.
Do you have the cdrom at first boot in your bios?
check my profile and e-mail me and I can tell you how to get some help programs for free. Hopefully you have broadband? Don't forget to include a return e-mail address. Skip

I've worked on many DELLs and the WinXP CD is a full version that can be used to boot the PC and access the Recovery Console or reinstall XP.

In fact the XP CD can be used on any computer (Dell or HP or clone) so long as you have a valid CD Key.

But your problem is likely:

1. A corrupt partition or file system. This can be verified as suggested by Cetin with FDISK in WinME Startup Disk or the Recovery Console.

2. As already mentioned perhaps your boot sequence was set to Floppy Disk instead of CD-ROM drive. So get into the BIOS and change the boot sequence. If it still does not boot from the CD-ROM then you may have a defective CD-ROM drive.

3. Recently I encountered an incident when XP couldn't boot due to a corrupt file system and after I attached the HDD to another PC and perform ChkDsk which fixed the files I was able to boot properly. But a detail diagnostic showed that the HDD was failing so had to be replaced.

4. If you can boot with the XP CD and access the Recovery Console you can try FIXMBR or FIXBOOT and see if that works.

5. If your XP is corrupt you can simply replace the system files using the Recovery Console. See the following link on how to do this:
http://www.digitalwebcast.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot2.htm

6. If all else fail try a reinstall. Some viruses can cause your PC not to boot. Are your files backed up?