PCTech Forums

you might have a bad/corrupt boot sector on your harddrive. Your Windows cd has it's own boot sector and when you don't hit a key to boot to the CD, it checks your hard drive for an OS and runs it. The easiest way to fix it (if this is the actual problem.. just a educated guess this far) would be to re-wrote the HD's boot sector. You'll need to boot into DOS and run the command "fdisk /mbr" (all it does is re-write the Master Boot Record and partitions, which includes the boot sector)

Notice i said DOS.. i don't believe this is something that can be done via the recovery console. If you don't have a dos boot disk, you can go to and download one. I would suppose most of the DOS disk images would include the FDISK program.

Try this...

1. Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
2. When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
3. Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.
4. Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.
5. You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.
6. Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk.(this is normally c: ) In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "D". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy d:\i386\ntldr c:
copy ntdetect.com c:

7. Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.

If this doesnt help,take a look at this link

Just to add, fdisk /mbr is not a valid winxp command. In XP it has been replaced by 'fixmbr.' You may also want to run 'fixboot' while you're there. Finally I would check the boot order in the BIOS - is the hard disk definitely set as a boot device there?

Well, none of it worked... DAMN! So I need to reinstall windows, can I just install over my current installation? Will I only lose settings that way? I would rather not reformat the HD if I dont have to. What is the best way to do it?

In my opinion,if you choose to reformat go to the website of your hard drive manufactor and download the diagnostic utility for your hard drive.Run it and have it write zero's to the disk(low level format).You will lose everything...partitions included.When its done,reboot with the xp disk,set up the partition and format to ntfs.You cant get a cleaner install than that.With the trouble your getting from your drive,writing zero's to it should do it alot of good.You can install over what you already have but,theres a chance it will help,and a chance it wont.

so you are saying though that I can reinstall windows right over the top of my existing installation?

Yes,you can.