Boot Problem

[TheCardMan]

Working on a HP Pavillion a350n, when you turn it on after the HP logo screen I get:

"Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot Device and press a key"

The bios see the HDD fine, any suggestions on what to look for?

XP Home

[TripleRLtd]

It has to be something in the Bios setup. Without going and searching the HP site myself, what is on that pc? Lan? SATA? RAID? Anything different? Also, what is the boot order set at now? What happens if you change to hdd first instead of the usual cd/fdd/hdd?
Have you checked for any bios updates?
And, last but not least, have you booted up with a floppy and tested the hard drive?

[TheCardMan]

The bios had the boot order ok, 1st floppy, 2nd hdd and then 3rd cdrom. I changed the order and still the same problem. I can boot from a floppy (I put in a Win98 Boot Floppy and it worked), I can boot from the CDROM (I booted from a WinPE CD and it worked). I couldn't find the HDD, the bios reconized it fine but I could not get to it. I ran FDISK and it told me I had no partitions. Saw the drive but no partitions. Very Strange. HP is supposed to have 2 partitions, One for the OS and one for the Recovery Software. Somehow I guess both disappeared. Looks like I need to partition the drive again and install WinXp. The problem being is that I do not have HP's version and software to have the computer go back to normal. I know if I call HP they will most likley charge me for recovery CD's. The Machine is Exactly a year old.

[TripleRLtd]

Ah, so that makes the problem more clear. Why fdisk from a win98 boot disk?
Do you have a WinXP Home Edition CD lying around that you can boot with? If so, boot up with it and try a repair install. See if it does see the old installation. I am assuming the HP was formatted as NTFS.

[TheCardMan]

I tried the recovery console, tried to:
COPY X:\i386\NTLDR C:
COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:

But it couldn't find the drive to copy it to.

I created a partition and not I can see the drive.

If I start the XP CD it askes me if I want to r4epair a Windows XP installation using Rocovery Console. I do not think it will see anything, I am not even sure what to type in when I get to recovery CD.

[TripleRLtd]

Well, it is now too late to do the repair install if I am understanding you correctly.
When you start the XP install, the first screen asks if you want to install, repair using the recovery console, or exit. You must choose install to get to the repair option on the next screen. The repair install is simply reinstalling xp over the top of the current install to repair any corruption or whatnot.
In the future, when you get to the "C: " prompt of the recovery console, you can type "help" and it will give a list of commands you can run. In your case, a "chkdsk /r" may have helped. Also, the "fixboot" or "fixmbr" may have helped, but now we will never know. For future reference, if you really want to learn, read this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307654
and keep asking questions here.
But, I am confused about something. Did you say that you ran the recovery console and it didn't find the drive? I don't understand that. When you run the rc it will ask what install to log on to. In other words, to run any commands, it needs to see the current install.

[TheCardMan]

Well, I can tell you that the recovery console option came up when I booted from the CDROM. When I pressed "R" to enter it, it went straight to a C:\ prompt. Didn't ask me or prompt for a install option. I could not do a "dir" or anything. I tried FIXBOOT and it couldn't find a partition. I tried the COPY NTLDR C: and COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:, and this also did nothing, said bad file name or something like that.

I just booted the xp cd and I am going to try the press ENTER for install and see if it asks me to repair an existing install...i doubt it.

Thanks for you input!!

[MobilePCPhysician]

I believe that HP when you start it you hit the f10 to get to the recovery partition. Follow the prompts to restore the operating system.

[TripleRLtd]

I believe that HP when you start it you hit the f10 to get to the recovery partition. Follow the prompts to restore the operating system.Aye, would have been worth a try, but I think he mentioned that nothing was found on the hdd. But now? I don't know what could have happened...
For future reference CardMan read and save the following :
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

[MobilePCPhysician]

The hidden recovery partition is fat32. The other partition is ntfs. A win98 boot disk won't see either partition.

[TripleRLtd]

The hidden recovery partition is fat32. The other partition is ntfs. A win98 boot disk won't see either partition.
Tell me why a win9x boot disk won't see a fat32 partition?

[confus-ed]

The bios had the boot order ok, 1st floppy, 2nd hdd and then 3rd cdrom. I changed the order and still the same problem. I can boot from a floppy (I put in a Win98 Boot Floppy and it worked), I can boot from the CDROM (I booted from a WinPE CD and it worked). I couldn't find the HDD, the bios reconized it fine but I could not get to it. I ran FDISK and it told me I had no partitions. Saw the drive but no partitions. Very Strange..

Not so strange ;) .. mighty familiar ! This is where you went wrong ...

All that tells you that something is wrong with your hardrive & nothing else - before you do anything else (it may be too late already) make an image of the drive & try some file recovery software - all this 'nothing seen' means is that whats on the drive can't easily be understood by windows as somethings gone wrong with the file structure (for whatever reason, 1/2 caught boot virus is a common cause)