boot failure system halted

Discussion in 'Windows OS's' started by damoc1, Jul 10, 2006.

  1. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    Hi Guys,

    I am unable to get onto windows xp pro, after booting up I get a black screen with an error message saying "Boot failure system halted". I have tried going through the f8 boot menu and although the system recognises the hard drive no matter how many times I try and boot the same error message appears.

    I have tried windowsxp recovery console to no effect also tried plugging my hard drive into a different machine and booting up with my hard drive as the slave but still no joy.??? I am getting desperate now as all i want to do is get my baby's photos off the drive and then reinstall windowsxp onto the hard drive.
    Can anybody help???:confused:
     
  2. Impotence

    Impotence May the source be with u!

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    Welcome to hardwareforums!

    Have you tried ASR? (Automated System Recovery) its on the windows XP disc, you have to push F5 when the text "push F5 to run Automated System Recovery" is displayed at the bottom of the screen :p

    This replaces all the system files on the hard disc, so you should be able to boot windows after this!
     
  3. thomas234

    thomas234 Big Geek

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    What do you mean by you put your hard drive in another machine and set it as slave, but still no joy? Did the other computer just not recognise it or what? Can you not boot up in safe mode at all?

    P.S Surely you backup everything incase something like this goes wrong? ;)
     
  4. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    I have tried th Automated sytem recovery but this doesnt seem to work either.

    Also i know i should have backed everything up but unfortunatly its something i keep meaning to do and didnt do it.:O

    To answer your question Thomas234, when putting the hard drive into another machine then booting it as slave drive it just doesnt seem to recognise the hard drive that has the problem??

    any more advise would be great as I am desperate to get this fixed.. :confused:
     
  5. Karanislove

    Karanislove It's D Grav80 Of Luv

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    RightClick my computer > manage > disk management > right hand side bottom, right click on your disk and initialise. Now you will be able to see your disk.
     
  6. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    thanks Karanislove I will check that one out tommorrow.

    thankyou.
     
  7. Karanislove

    Karanislove It's D Grav80 Of Luv

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    For checkin the boot failure problem.........

    First thing, run the memory test from Memtest86 - Memory Diagnostic Page overnight and see if you comes up with memory errors.
    Check your system temperature.
    Have you added any hardware that could be too much for your PSU?
     
  8. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    Hi Guys,

    I have tried the suggested fixes and still no joy, the hard drive still isnt getting recognised? I have even tried going into the bios and detecting all hard drives from there but still nothing.

    One this i did though was plug the corrupt harddrive into the harddrive that is fine and when booting up the pc was asking me to insert boot diskette A ???

    can anyone help?? :confused:
     
  9. izzy007

    izzy007 Big Geek

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    wat do u mean by 'One this i did though was plug the corrupt harddrive into the harddrive that is fine and when booting up the pc was asking me to insert boot diskette A???'

    wat hard drive is it, ide, sata?
     
  10. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    sorry not sure what you mean by this?
     
  11. Karanislove

    Karanislove It's D Grav80 Of Luv

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    Check in your floppy drive, if there is any other floppy in it already? Coz usually it happens when you dont have a bootable floppy in your floppy drive and you restart your computer.
     
  12. izzy007

    izzy007 Big Geek

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    what interface is your hard drive. is it serial ata, parralel ata. does it only hav one single cable connecting to the motherboard or is the cable very wide
     
  13. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    i have checked and there doesnt appear to be a floppy ion the drive?
     
  14. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    sorry im not up on the computer talk, but basically it has very wide cable connecting to the mother board, .
    what i did was got another pc , and took my harddrive and plugged this into the cables that were coming off his hard drive and got the aforementioned message. then i disconnected the cd drive and plugged my harddrive into the cables, and then didnt get anything, it wasnt even getting detected??
     
  15. izzy007

    izzy007 Big Geek

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    make sure that this drive has the jumper set to slave or does not have a jumper on it at all. put it in another computer ideally on the cable which has the main hard drive plugged into and make the boot order in the bios to boot from the working hard drive first. u shud get into windows and be able to back up ur files
     
  16. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    what do you mean the jumper set to slave??
    how do i do that?
    (thanks for this, this is great advise):cool:
     
  17. izzy007

    izzy007 Big Geek

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    on the hard drive, there is a small sort of thing which shorts two pins. it should be next to the plug on the hard drive, just pull that off and it will be set to slave

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  18. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    ahh i get ya, ok when i have done this what is the best thing to do then?
    do i plug the corrupt harddrive in to the cables coming of the harddrive that is fine and then boot the machine?

    also

    what if the corrupt harddrive doesnt have that jumper slave thing?:confused:
     
  19. Karanislove

    Karanislove It's D Grav80 Of Luv

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    Hold on! first of all, I would like to confirm what are you trying to do actually?
    Trying to repair currupted HDD?
    Fixing windows boot problem?

    Because if your HDD is currupted then you have to buy a new one to make your system working and all other things like data recovery will work later on.

    As you said previously that your HDD is not being able to detect by you BIOS as well, which is the complete sign that your HDD is dead. In this case, if your data is very important then you have to go to the Data Recovery pros. however if it spins and detected by BIOS, then there are chances to get your data back.
     
  20. damoc1

    damoc1 Geek Trainee

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    ok im getting a tad confused now?
    basically when i boot my pc the error message "boot failure, system halted" appears. when booting i can do f8 to get the boot menu and see that it says cd rom, hard drive, removable drive (i think), (i cannot get into safe mode screen) when i select harddrive it boots and then gives me the boot failure, system halted message.

    now, whether this is a hard drive problem or a windowsxp boot problem i do not know, i assumed it was the hard drive as when i plug a different hard drive into my pc it boots up fine...
    i have then taken my hard drive and plugged it into a different pc connecting it to the cables that are coming off the harddrive that is already in the different pc and then getting the message i posted before asking for a bott diskette A??

    hope this helps..once again any advice is great as im not best on computers, all i want to do is get some photos off and reinstall windowsxp.:)
     

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