Re: Boot failure: System halted
- From: litwakfamily@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:16:42 -0700
On Aug 5, 7:22 am, "Anna" <myn...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<litwakfam...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1186285728.008683.303220@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I was just now working along in XP, when I started hearing odd noises
from m computer and the CD ROM started misbehaving, playing the same
few notes of a song over and over. The system froze. I lost all
keyboard and mouse capability. I turned off the power and turned it
back on. Instead of the computer needing to be turned on after I
turned on the power supply, the computer started immediatley. I
turned off hte computer and restarted it. I've now done this three
times. Each time, I see messages on the screen about the client mac
address, something about DHCP and a spinning slash mark, and then
PXE M0F; Exiting Intel PXE ROM
Boot Failure: System halted.
What does this probably mean? Is my hard drive dead? How can I
tell? Since you can't book an XP system from DOS, there's really no
way to check the hard drive that I know of. Any suggestions please?
What can I do to solve this crisis please? Thanks.
Duncan
Duncan:
From your description it certainly sounds like a hardware failure of some
sort - possibly involving a defective HDD.
One of the first things you should do is download the HDD diagnostic utility
that is usually available from the website of the manufacturer of your HDD
and check out the HDD. This diagnostic utility can be created either as a
bootable floppy disk or bootable CD. (Since you were able to post your
message, I'm assuming you have another PC available to you).
In the event this is not a hardware-related problem involving the HDD or
some other component in your machine, you could also attempt a Repair
install of the XP OS using your XP installation CD, assuming you have such a
CD, i.e., you're not working with an OEM machine that has only a recovery
type of CD. Again, from your description of the problem I don't think you'll
be even able to effect a Repair install but give it a try.
Sort version: The system was set up with an OEM version but some time
ago I bought my own full copy of XP which I installed on another, now
dead PC. Its hard drive is fine and I plan to switch them this
afternoon and see what I can do. Since I tried to do the Windows
Repair and that brought me to a C prompt, I'm guessing that this means
the system really can't find the hard drive. I appreciate very much
your advice and the advice of others but I have one big question.
Assuming that my hard drive has failed (which I'm guessing since I can
do a dir on D but not on C), doesn't that mean that the disk itself is
damaged? How could I plug the bad hard drive into another computer
and recover data? I'd love to do that but, not being a hardware
person, I don't understand how that could work. So please excuse me
for this. I'm not trying to disagree with anyone who has kindly
offered advice. I'm trying to understand how this might work.
Thanks.
Duncan
Another thing to consider assuming you're working with a unbootable
dysfunctional HDD is to connect the disk to another working machine as a
secondary drive and try to access & copy any files that are important to
you. So if worse comes to worse at least you'll have some sort of backup if
& when you need to install a fresh HDD assuming it comes to that.
Anna
.
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