PC booting troubles

[e-LAN-go]

This morning I found my PC rebooting itself and when it got to verifying dmi pool data it came up with 'NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart' which I did.

When it did verifying pool data again it then it gives me the usual your PC didn't restart properly select the following options safe mode and etc but I couldn't scroll between the options listed so I let it do the countdown until it started windows normally

Once it started to load windows after 2-3 secs it gets the blue screen of death then my PC immediately restarted and it kept doing the same thing again.

Since I was unsure on the exact nature of the problem I decided to try the usual solutions e.g. checking my PC, swapping/replacing the RAM and etc but none of that seemed to help.

I thought I might need to format so whilst it tries to boot from the cd it prompts you with 'press any key to continue' but it won't respond when I do that so it skips it and continues with your PC didn't restart properly etc and as usual I can't choose between normal or safe mode windows.

There's nothing wrong with my keyboard (I even tried another keyboard for the hell of it) as I was able to press delete and get into BIOS but I'm confused whilst during the POST sequence it won't acknowledge when I press any of the buttons when it asks to.

The last thing I've tried was to clear the CMOS which didn't make any difference but as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with my motherboard since it's able POST so I would greatly appreciate any helpful solutions.

Thanks.

[killie99]

CPU fan is working ok? If you can get into the BIOS have a look at the cpu temp and voltage levels to see if any of them look incorrect.

[e-LAN-go]

I've just checked what you've mentioned and all of them seem to be fine.

Even if that were the problem it wouldn't explain why I can't even press a button to boot from an xp cd or select whether I want to switch between safe or normal mode windows.

[eljefehall]

Checked the hard disk cables are still connected properly.

I see you have two hard disks, could you try installing onto the second one to eliminate disk failure from the equation? When I have seen that message before it has usually either been a corrupt disk or disk failure.

If you still have no joy with the above, could you try putting the hard disk in another machine to help the process of elimination?

[e-LAN-go]

Heh I was being lazy and not getting around checking the hard drives but my PC detected both of them without any troubles and I've just checked them now on the PC I'm using.

Both drives seem to be working fine except for 1 of the partitions on the drive that has XP installed on as it appears to be corrupt since the PC I'm using now is asking me to format it.

But I'm unable to format/install windows on it as I can't even boot from the XP cd I have.

[kalniel]

My guess is corrupt master boot record.

First make sure you've not got a floppy or CD in there that it's trying to boot from (always pays to check the obvious!). Also take out any usb drives - infact have you had any flash mem plugged in recently? If you didn't safely remove the device this can occur.

To repair the ntldr file itself, boot up with the windows XP disk. Press a key to boot from the CD, press R to repair windows. Press 1 and enter to log into windows installation. Type in your password, then copy the ntldr files to the root of the hard drive, eg:

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

Take the CD out and reboot.

To fix the master boot record, do exactly the same thing but at the prompt type:

fixboot
fixmbr

Remove the CD and reboot.