Won't boot in safe mode or any mode.

[jumpsuit]

Aloha

I've got a bit of a strange problem. On rebooting my desktop the usual Sony and Pentium graphics came up and thats it - black screen and no startup.
Tried safe mode - same result nothing happens.

There's no hard drive activity after selecting xp pro in any mode LOL

Any ideas?

[jumpsuit]

Aloha!

I managed to find a 'ready made' XP pro boot disc with
boot.ini
ntdetect
ntldr
but it didn't work, still the black screen.

Acronis disk director is still showing the correct drives and space used/free on each so thats a good sign. However syscheck states windows not found.

[kee-lo_]

Have you checked the RAM is seated properly (probably a VERY long shot!)

[jumpsuit]

Not yet although the pc hasn't moved at all or suffered any 'bangs.'

update: managed to make the bootable cd and at least that loads. Only problem I'm then asked to insert the sp2 disk into the drive. When I exit that and enter the auto system recovery option it asks me to insert the ATS floppy LOL

[Blencogo]

You have had a busy day!

Jumpy, can you answer the following and we can then make sure you have a bootable boot.ini which will work in your machine.

Do you have a recovery partition on the desktop? (everything may be looking for Windows in the wrong partition)
Are your drive partitions 'standard' (Programs on C:\ ; Data only on D:\)
Do you have a single HDD or two in RAID config
Windows is on C:\ ?
Operating System is XP Pro ?

[jumpsuit]

Hi Blencogo.

No recovery partition.
Yep - standard c and d drive setup
Single HDD
Windows on C
XP pro

I may not have got there yet but I've amassed some flipping handy tools along the way LOL

[thundybird]

Hi i think i've had the same problem as you. unlucky is all i can say. I've had my laptop travelling backwards and forwards to the facory over 4 times. In the end i've had my harddrive replaced. I only got my vaio back today. If your computer is still in garentee then i would get on the phone to sony or where you purchased your computer. Thats what i did.

I got told along the way that it was something to do with the recovery partition going corrupt. I dunno but is there some kind of error out there which is causing this error? I spoke to someone else who also had had this problem.
Good luck!!!

[jumpsuit]

Thanks Thundybird.

Sadly my Vaio is roughly 2 years at least outside its warranty LOL

[tonybeard]

Acronis Disk Director is a very dodgy program and I would never reccommend to use it. The same blank screen occured for me too using disk director when it started trying to boot off the USB instead of the HDD or floppy or CD (for no reason at all???). Even with a CMD.ini bootable SD USB reader it just refused to play ball. In the end I took out the CMOS battery and let the bios charge drain for 24 hours and to reset the system installing as if a brand new installation of hardware . If you don't have the installation floppy for your mobo then don't try this but it worked a treat for me. Give Disk Director a big miss matey and create several partitions on the HD using the XP DOS when installing

[jumpsuit]

Arrrrr Matey - cheers for that I will proceed with caution.

[Blencogo]

Open up in Notepad the boot.ini on your ready made XP boot disc.

Is it exactly like this: -

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect