BIOS unable to launch Windows XP

One problem is that you've got a faulty hard drive - replace it and then do your reload.

 

That is true, but isn't the cause of the hardware error you reported:

"A related mystery:  laptop fails the Pre-boot system assessment test:  "Start DST Short Test" fails, error 1000-0146, with the message "Unit 0: DST log contains previous errors"."

This means the drive isn't long for this world - so keep backups!

SOLVED the problem!

For details, go to the Microsoft XP online help, and ask about removing the LILO loader.

This is done like this:

fdisk /mbr

I used the Dell "Diagnostics and utilities" CDROM.  Laptop will boot up from this.  Choose the MSDOS window, and should see an MSDOS screen with a D: prompt.  The fdisk command can be entered here.  Takes less than a second.  Exit, and the system should reboot.

I have to say this was extremely frustrating, took me several days of trying various options.  Dell support was no help.  It appears that Linux does something peculiar to the XP boot sector, which the XP loader doesn't notice.  I did a fixboot from the Dell diagnostics, which did not fix the problem.

 

 

 

I have a Dell Latitude D505 with Windows XP installed (and verified through XP repair utilities) in C:\WINDOWS. System was set up for dual booting with GRUB loader, Windows XP in drives C and D, Linux in the rest.  I needed more disk space, so partitioned the Linux sectors into a new drive F.  This also erased a Linux boot sector, apparently given over to the Linux GRUB loader.

Well, "partinioning" Linux into a new sector always means: Giving Windows the chance to screw everything up. It's like making an applecake without knowing how apples look like

My puzzle: how to reset BIOS to launch Windows.

This one will get tricky as the BIOS fortunately never knows Windows at all ...

But to be serious: The only chance to bring this one up again is to recreate your MBR (Master Boot Record). This is the instance the BIOS refers to.

Doing so will need some knowledge of HDD-organisation like: the MBR is always the first 512Byte sector on EVERY HDD. Within this sector all the informations of your HDD are stored. That is mainly the informaton, at which block any OS will be located.

QUESTION:  How to connect BIOS on HDD bootup to C:\WINDOWS?  I suspect one of the Dell diagnostic utilities would do the trick, but I cannot find adequate documentation on them..

ANSWER: No, I doubt that ...

But you could get yourself a Linux Live CD, like Ubuntu LiveCD. Asuming you got yourself the latter one, do as follows:

Boot your PC from that CD. After startup, go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and enable (by checking it off) the Universal repository.

Now you have to "install" the ms-sys package. Installing means - as this is a LiveCD - the package is downloaded (so you need internet access) and will be processed as if being installed. As the LiveCD only uses RAM as sole place to save information unless you tell it to, your data on the HDD will not be affected - so don't worry.

Now lets procede: Push Crtl+Alt+F1. This will lead you to a so called shell - a command line interface. now tipe in the following commands:

sudo apt-get install ms-sys

and return it. Make sure yout typed this correctly, unless you will get ----- an error message ;)

Now, let's find out more about linux and why you should never let windows screw with it's file system. As I can read your calling for help, you never had any contact with the differences of how linux and windows manage file systems. You know that windows always uses this stuff called C:, D: and so on. Forgett about it as long as you are using linux. Linux is a block orientated OS, meaning, it handles drives differently. Every recognised drive gets loaded into the /dev and is labeled by its position on the cable. This means, having two drives on one IDE port will give the first (master) drive the "name" hda. But I don't want to annoy you any more, so type in the shell - when the intallation finished and you got another promt:

sudo fdisk -l

There you can find a list of your devices which should be something like:

-----------------------------------------------------

Disk /dev/sda: xxx GB, "a lot of" bytes
x heads, y sectors/track, z cylinders
Units = cylinders of ccc * 512 = ddd bytes
Disk identifier:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           ?         ???      xxxxxxx  ??  NTFS
/dev/sda2               ?         ???      xxxxxxx  ??  NTFS
/dev/sda3               ?         ???      xxxxxxx  ??  NTFS

-----------------------------------------------------

This means, your drive is parted into 3 different blocks. The asteric at sda1 shows you the boot partition. Have a close look on that, if you can't read it because of an screen overflow (you cannot scroll in a shell) try

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

if that is not the boot device, try on by exchanging sda by sdb and so on ...

Now, let's assume your drive is sda (I could bet on that but it may be different) just type:

sudo ms-sys -m /dev/sda

after that, you can reboot your system and windows should come back "online".

There is another - as I think more complex - way: Reinstalling  grub. This is something you might have done before reinstalling Windows, but by doing now, this could lead to data loss or just windows-loss, so I won't advice you to do that right now.

Tell me if this worked for you ...