EMachines - fresh xp reload - in recovery loop

[jakkwb]

Hello all,

I have an Emachines W2646. Just got fresh recovery cd set for it. Ran the recovery CDs thru it, remove CD, reboot. PC goes right back to the recovery options screen (No cd in drive!).

So, I thought this was a partition problem, so I put a normal XP CD in it and deleted all the partitions (there were 3?).

Ran the recovery again, rebooted, same thing.

The HD is a Seagate and it passes their full diag tester.

Any suggestions?

[jakkwb]

did that. No change. Just did the recovery CDs on a brand new HD just for kicks - same thing....

[jakkwb]

some more info: here are the partitions that are setup on the hd after running the recovery cd set:

1: c:\MiniNT
2: D:\PRDSMIMG
3: d:\Windows

It is still looping back to the recovery when I restart it.

[geoscomp]

or does this computer have a zip drive or any card reader type drives connected? If so you may need to disconnect them and/or shut them off in the bios before doing the recovery. It isn't unusual for recovery cd's to cause the windows drive to be assigned an incorrect drive letter when those devices are present.

[jakkwb]

nope. No other drives on this system. HD is CS on IDE0, CD-RW is on IDE1. Pretty sure it is on CS also. Anyway, it reads the recovery CDs just fine.

It "looks" like the PC is set to boot from the recovery partition instead of the actual Windows install. How do I check that?

[jakkwb]

update - just for kicks I put both the CD and the HD on the same IDE controller, ran the recovery CD set AGAIN. Rebooted. It worked! Windows is booting!

Ain't that strange? When I get all the drivers/updates etc on it I am going to put them back on seperate controllers and see what happens.

I'll keep ya posted,

Thanks guys,

AW