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unable to boot dimension 4100 with xp home
Could someone please help me boot from my cd drive. I can access the bios menu. I arrow over to boot, highlight the cd rom press f10 and still get the same black screen of death "unable to start because of corrupt or missing \windows\system32\config.....
The only other access I have is a floppy that says xp on it but whem it loads it says windows milenium and
has a A\ something waiting for a command. The one time it did work I had the xp disc in and when I pressed r I got the same " unable........ What is going on here. I was trying to download sketchup. Is some copmpletely destructive trojan that came from Google????
Message Edited by madjac on 07-29-2008 03:41 PM
mombodog
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July 29th, 2008 21:00
Go to boot tab in the bios and set the cdrom as first boot device, hard drive as second, floppy third.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dzuul/syssetup.htm#boot_screen
mombodog
12.7K Posts
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July 29th, 2008 23:00
They don't move, highlight the first boot device and hit enter, then use up andf down arrows to select cdrom from the list, then hit enter again to set your selection, do this for 2nd and 3rd. Then save changes.
"The bottom right area lists keys and their functions for the currently displayed screen. " taken from the page I linked to.
madjac
35 Posts
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July 29th, 2008 23:00
madjac
35 Posts
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July 30th, 2008 00:00
Great! I got to the recovery console but I don't see a command for substituting the system 32 folder on the disk for the one on the hard drive. I quess I have two choices.
1. Install ubuntu
2.Try the repair option of the windows setup. I'm going to read knowledge base 315341 as directed in Windows xp inside out. Do you think this is the best option? Thanks a million!
Well I read that and it says I have to reinstall service pack 2 again after the reinstall which looks complex.
I think I'm done with windows-ubuntu here I come!