[Elijha]

OK hope this is the right forum, I can't find any other similar problems / solutions anywhere else so here's hoping.

My PC was fine until I accepted a small Security Update via windows update this morning it said it needed to reboot for completion which I agreed to and upon rebooting I'm prompted with a message to insert a bootable disk or restart from my bios.

Now I'll just cover some specs first;

CPU: Intel E8500 3.12 GHz
MB: MSI Neo P35
Ram: ddr2 4GB
3 HDD's - SATA connection various GB used for storage
1 IDE HDD - 160GB only one with OS - WIN XP set to primary NTFS (yes it's old as in 2004)
1 IDE DVD - same cable as the HDD set to slave

ON booting into the BIOS it detects all usb and SATA drives for setting the boot priority options (I have a card reader thing so thiers like 7 of these bootable card drives listed) but the IDE drives are not listed... but thier is a final option to 'Allow Other' bootable devices and I figure it falls through to this normally and boots of the IDE (though with an XP disc in the DVD drive now it never automatically boots off of that).

I can press F11 and get to a boot menu during BIOS POST that does let me selet the IDE drives as well as all the other drives. Selecting the IDE HDD gives the same message - no bootable drive found please insert or reboot.

OK so thats where I was left...
I have tried the following

- Directly select the drive via the Boot Select during POST prompt
:: No Bootable drive found
- Tried all drives as listed to ensure I knew which drives I was looking for as the boot drive even took the side off the case to confirm the drive size and connection.

- Boot from XP Pro disc and through consol try CHKDISK -disc is fine success

.. now you have to find an install and log in with an admin password so I KNOW the disc isnt fried at this point.

- Boot from XP Pro disc and through consol try FIXMBR -reports sucess
:: Still not booting

- Boot from XP Pro Disc to consol and FIXBOOT - reports success
:: Still not booting

So I thought their was a repair / rebuild option in the XP install process so I went to do this and it sees / lists all my drives and partitions correctly but when I select the C drive it has found it tells me
...
disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atpi [MBR]
However, this disk does not contain a Windows XP-Compatible partition
...
Which I find confusing. Since I can clearly get to it via the repair consol.

I really can't reformat this drive without backing it up and right now have no other machines that can access these drives to do so (borrowing a old mac laptop for this post).

For full disclosure ... I have had this computer in storage for well over a year and two weeks ago began using it again so it has pretty much been telling me to add new security patches etc every few days since I started using it again even though I sat down and spent ages applying then all when I first got it going again it seems to need to wait a day or so before some show up. A week ago I also updated the CPU from an old 3 GHz P4 Penryn to the stated one above and added a new GFX card. I had to update the MSI BIOS for the machine to boot with the new CPU but other then that it was basically plug and play - it has gone through several power cycles fine since then.

So now I'm suck - any help greatly appreciated.

E

[Elijha]

As a follow up I have also tried to [through the recovery consol] to ?repair? my boot.ini which I don't even think exists on the drive -though should it if I only have the one OS on the drive/ whole system? I can't find an answer.

However being impatient I thought I'd give it a go.

bootcfg /list
:: no entries to display

bootcfg /rebuild takes ages to scan the disks but finds my C:/windows install I go to add it and it reports failure.

I then try to do it manually

bootcfg /add
It reports failure again .. though I found bootcfg /list now shows 2 entires the same for the C:/windows.

Couldn't see an option to delete one .. so I restarted and still no luck.

Booted into the XP Recovery Disc consol again and now bootcfg /list again reports no entries to display



I can't believe it was fine this morning and I've spent all day on this AAArrrgggg.

[Hermitt43]

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?

[Elijha]

The drive isn't recognised as bootable .. it isn't even getting near the windows partition. I'm only accessing any tools on the machine via booting through an XP Pro disc, and I can only get to a repair consol on that, I don't get a repair option for a reinstall.

[Hermitt43]

Go into the BIOS and set your CD/DVD Rom drive as the first boot device. Insert your XP CD in the drive and Reboot -- At the prompt, press ENTER to boot from the XP CD. This will allow you to do a Clean Install.

[Elijha]

I'm sorry to sound a little short / rude and appreciate any help that people give .. maybe I'm not very good at explaining things... but in my opening post I did explain that I can't choose an IDE drive as a bootable device - it simple isn't in the list just SATA and USB. My DVD drive and the primary OS drive are both IDE. I guess good old IDE while supported isnt much of a priority anymore in MSI's Bios', I can pull up a boot menu during post and from here you can choose to boot off an item which is what I have been doing.

Even though the IDE drives are not selectable in the BIOS settings list as bootable drive - it was working fine - so I assume after it checks all the other devices for boot options it will then move onto the IDE devices, though the DVD drive being a slave to the master HDD it never gets a look-in as bootable unless you use the option to select the drive during boot from a boot menu.

In any case my actions as listed have all been through the XP Pro disc and it doesn't show the option to repair my installation, I only have the choice to repartition and install on the drive - ie lose everything thats on it.

Since From a consol prompt I can see the drive, log in as an administrator I fully believe that their must be a way to get it booting again - I just don't know any other options but those I have tried.

[Hermitt43]

Sorry, I just re-read your posts and realize I don't have the experience needed to help you.
Don't give up though, I'm sure someone will help you solve this issue.

Good luck,
Jim

[Elijha]

Just updating this for anyone who ever finds this thread.

I got my hands on a copy of windows 7 and used this disc to try a repair of the windows XP installation - in the hope it had more advance checking / reporting / repairing functions. It did find a fault with the drive and reported it as an error with the partition tables. It could still see the defined partitions though .. I did let it attempt to fix it but the drive is still not bootable.

Perhapse thier is a way to repair this but I've now lost patient with the downtime and the weekend is over so .. new HDD with windows 7 on it and I'll use that to archive what content I can retrieve off of the drive.

I still believe the error was caused by the security update from windows XP thus other might encounter this same problem at some time. I'd still welcome any solutions if anyone else has any ideas. Once I've back up what I can I'll try out the Linux Live CD of GParted... I'm not one to be left defeated.