I bought a new Vista machine. Came to hate Vista within 24 hours and decided to create a dual-booter (XP). I put on System Commander. Then I plugged in my old SATA hard drive through a USB-casing and waited skepitically for System Commander to offer to boot from it. It didn't.
No big deal. I decided to make a dual boot using a new non-upgrade, start-from-scratch Windows XP disk.
Then, before even trying that, something strange happened. I was working in Vista. The computer spontaneously rebooted. (The old hard drive from my other computer was still attached through the USB encasing.) System Commander suddenly detected its XP installation. I click on XP. That produced a unending blinking cursor.
I powered down and then back on. The computer tried to networkbook (PXE-E53: No boot filename received).
I killed LAN booting in BIOS setup.
Now on bootup the cursor just blinked.
This happened no matter who I reconfigured the boot sequence or what I chose in the BIOS boot menu. (System Commander was nowhere to be seen!)
Then, in desperation, I put the new Windows XP CD-ROM in. (After all, with no boot record, I should be offered a clean install, right?) The XP disk loaded a bunch of drivers. That was followed by the Windows Blue Screen of Death.
So now I have a totally non-booting computer.
The computer:
Gateway - Q6600 Desktop
3 GB RAM
2 physical hard drives, SATA, 500 Gb each. Drive 0 is partitioned into C: with preinstalled and D:, a recovery partition. Drive 1 is empty but formatted.
Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW, bootable
I also added an external Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW (USB), bootable? and my old hard drive from my old computer through a USB-supported encasement.
No floppy drive. That's why I did not follow System Commander's advice about making a backup boot record to a:. They offered no other devices on which to make such a backup.
Is there any hope even if just getting past the Blue SOD?
No big deal. I decided to make a dual boot using a new non-upgrade, start-from-scratch Windows XP disk.
Then, before even trying that, something strange happened. I was working in Vista. The computer spontaneously rebooted. (The old hard drive from my other computer was still attached through the USB encasing.) System Commander suddenly detected its XP installation. I click on XP. That produced a unending blinking cursor.
I powered down and then back on. The computer tried to networkbook (PXE-E53: No boot filename received).
I killed LAN booting in BIOS setup.
Now on bootup the cursor just blinked.
This happened no matter who I reconfigured the boot sequence or what I chose in the BIOS boot menu. (System Commander was nowhere to be seen!)
Then, in desperation, I put the new Windows XP CD-ROM in. (After all, with no boot record, I should be offered a clean install, right?) The XP disk loaded a bunch of drivers. That was followed by the Windows Blue Screen of Death.
So now I have a totally non-booting computer.
The computer:
Gateway - Q6600 Desktop
3 GB RAM
2 physical hard drives, SATA, 500 Gb each. Drive 0 is partitioned into C: with preinstalled and D:, a recovery partition. Drive 1 is empty but formatted.
Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW, bootable
I also added an external Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW (USB), bootable? and my old hard drive from my old computer through a USB-supported encasement.
No floppy drive. That's why I did not follow System Commander's advice about making a backup boot record to a:. They offered no other devices on which to make such a backup.
Is there any hope even if just getting past the Blue SOD?
