Windows fails to boot (BIOS loops ad-infinitem)

Can anyone help before Dell charges me £60?!!!

A few days ago my Windows XP OS began to fail to boot following the
execution of the Dell BIOS screen. The BIOS ends (when the progress bar
reaches the end) and, when/where Windows used to start, starts all over
again. This BIOS loop continues ad-infinitem.

I have two IDE HDDs running, I think, in 'Cable Select'. The primary is a
post-factory add-on 160GB SAMSUNG and the second is the Dell factory fitted
40GB, possibly an IBM or maybe a SEAGATE.

When I installed the 160GB drive I used Casper XP to clone the OS and all
data from the 40GB to the 160GB and all was well. Everything worked fine for
around a year.

This problem, however, has happened before. The last time it happened, I
copied all data and settings onto DVDs (by changing the BIOS and using the
old XP OS I hadn't yet deleted from the 40GB), formatted the 160GB,
re-installed the OS and put all the data and settings back on. It took about
a week.
Is there a way to fix the problem without doing all that again? And, of
course, not risking any of the data on the 160GB drive?

I have tried the fixboot.exe command, having booted from the XP CD, but, as
I don't really know what I'm doing, haven't tried anything else. The hardware
is all good and sound, although the full bit check did take around 12
hours!!!!

Any ideas?

Jack

P.S. Dell are proposing formatting and reinstalling the OS 'clean' onto the
40GB, making it the primary, making an untold number of partitions here there
and everywhere and then making the 160GB the data storage drive. Whilst I
realise that this is probably the "Rolls Royce" solution - it seems
complicated, will cost me £60 and is unlikely to be able to be fixed by me in
the future without the further outlay of another £60.

Probably the first thing you should do is to check out the HDD to determine
if it's defective. I assume you haven't done that yet. So download the disk
diagnostic utility from Samsung...
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Hard...ties/hutil.htm
to check out the disk.

Assuming the HDD is non-defective, you could try a Repair install of the
operating system. I'm assuming here that your XP installation CD is a "full"
CD, not a Dell recovery disk, and as such you'll be able to run a Repair
install from the XP installation CD.

A Repair install of the OS the process is relatively straightforward. It
would be roughly akin to making a fresh install of the OS, but in nearly
every case your existing programs & user-created data would be retained.
While it would be a rather rare situation where data would be lost or
corrupted as a result of the Repair install, and as unlikely as it may be,
it *could* happen.

There are a number of websites that contain step-by-step instructions for
undertaking a Repair install. As I previously indicated the process is not
at all difficult and not terribly time-consuming. If you do a Google search
on "XP repair install", you'll be pointed to many of these sites. Here are a
few...

Assuming the Repair install is successful, you should use your A-V program
to immediately check out your PC for any virus infestation. Also, you will
need to download/install *all* the MS critical updates since SP2. (I'm
assuming that if the Repair install is necessary, you will be undertaking it
with a XP CD that contains SP2). That, of course, is one of the downsides re
undertaking a Repair install. It's usually an onerous task to download all
the Critical Updates from MS especially if you're using a dialup phone
connection rather than broadband.

Needless to say, there's no guarantee that the Repair install will be
successful since there may be problems present other than a
mildly-corrupted OS that a Repair install will generally correct.

As Anna suggests try repair. Boot from the XP CD - do not select the first
repair option (Recovery Console) - continue and you should get a dialogue
indicating that setup has found a Windows installation and ask if you want
to repair - select yes. Setup will continue, actually the :repair is an
upgrade Windows installation.

I'm not an expert at this, but I suggest looking at the BIOS (I think by
holding down Delete as the computer start up)
When you access the BIOS, I think you should check and make sure that the
BIOS boots from the primary hard disk.

How to get into your BIOS depends, not on Windows, but on what
motherboard/BIOS you have. As a matter of fact, you have to access the
BIOS before Windows even starts to boot. One common way is to press
the Del key when you first power on, but that's not necessarily right
for your computer. Watch the screen carefully when you first boot;
there's often a message there telling you what to do. If not, check
your system documentation or check with your vendor.

Also look here: http://michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm Or
just try the Del key. There's a good chance that's correct for you.

Are we even still sure that this is actually windows based? If we tried
checking the
BIOS first, that could save some time.

- The repair didn't work. It was one of the avenues I hadn't tried (or even
knew about) but it didn't work. The BIOS now completes and a new screen
appears, but it only has a blinking cursor in the top left hand corner,
which remains, yep you've guessed it, - ad-infinitem. Luckily, when booting
from the other drive I can still see the corrupt drive data so I can still
rescue it, even if it will take me a week or so!!
Luckily I have 10mb broadband, courtsey of a Pharma giant, so a system full
of Drivers and Upgrades takes only a few minutes.

Thanks for your posts but I'm way ahead of you on the BIOS front. It's
definitely not the BIOS as I have been altering the Boot order in the BIOS
all day, back and forth between the 160GB, 40GB and CD/DVD in order to try
different things. It's definitely the 160GB HDD's Boot sector that's the
problem and the repair suggested by the other guys hasn't worked either.
So.........my way or Dell's way.........I'm flipping

Did you check out the drive with the Samsung HDD diagnostic utility as
previously suggested? If you haven't, you really should just to assure
yourself that the disk is non-defective.

The problem is that the Samsung utility warns that it may delete all the
data!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately I can't take that chance, so I will run the
utility but only after I've copied all the data onto DVDs - wish me luck.

It's *always* wise to backup your data in cases where you're dealing with a
dysfunctional HDD, so you're obviously doing the right thing by doing so.

I just wanted to kind of reassure you that's there's virtually no chance of
losing or corrupting data through the use of a HDD manufacturer's diagnostic
utility. At least based upon our experience over more than 10 years using
these utilities from a variety of HDD manufacturers. I've probably used, or
have been involved with, this type of diagnostic utility a few thousand
times and I can't recall a single instance of a data corruption/loss problem
through their use. (Although I have to admit we haven't had extensive
experience with the Samsung HDD diagnostic utility). Still, as we've learned
over the years - *anything* is possible in a PC environment. I long ago
purged (or tried to purge) the words "always" & "never" from my vocabulary
when discussing issues & problems affecting PCs.

I think in Samsung's case the caveat is a disclaimer to "take them off the
hook" as it were just in case anything does go awry with the diagnostic
process. Then, too, these diagnostic utilities frequently contain an option
to "zero out" the HDD (what many users mistakenly call a "low-level
format"). Unfortunately more than one user has mistakenly selected that
option and we know the disastrous consequences of that.

In any event, you're certainly doing the right thing in backing up whatever
data you want or need, and the above comments are in no way designed to
dissuade you from that process. But do run the diagnostic utility after your
backup has been completed unless you've previously resolved the problem.

[beroccaboy]

same problem

dell inspiron 9300
samsung 160gb hdd hm160hc
samsung 160gb hdd hm160jc (backup drive)
microsoft windows xp sp3
norton 360 anti virus
microsoft office 2007

after a while, sometimes months, sometimes weeks, sometimes days my dell laptop computer fails to boot. it goes through the bios dell logo stuff, then freezes with a flashing white cursor in the top left hand corner.

i use bartpe and selfimage to maintain a backup on similar samsung 160gb hdd. i swap the faulty drive out with the backup drive and sync the data from the faulty drive to the backup drive (now in my laptop) using scooter software beyond compare and my laptop works for a while. yes, even after the laptop drive has failed i can remove it from the laptop and put it in an external usb drive and read the data without error.

i have tried fixing the drive with easus partition table doctor. still no boot. i have tried fixing the drive with active partition recovery. still no boot. i have also tried copying the first 64 sectors from the working drive to the failed drive using microsoft dskprobe. still no boot. and yet i can copy a working drive over the failed drive and it will boot; or i can reinstall the xp os over the failed drive and it will work.

at least the problem doesn't appear to be with the 1st 64 sectors.

[dellhell]

I know these are old posts about old computers but it seems to happen a lot with both Dell laptops and desktops in particular when a large disk upgrade is attempted.

Bottom line:

If like me you have an old computer that works just fine for basic home stuff like browsing, e-mail and photo storage and you want to extend it's life by fitting a large (>137gb) internal hard disk, check that operating system (you will need XP SP1 or higher) and BIOS are 48-Bit LBA compliant.

There is a free HDINFO tool in 48bitlba.com that will do this for you.

For the potentail benefit of other old timers out there, here is my long-winded story:

I had a similar issue when upgrading the hard disk on my Dell Optiplex GX260 (running XP Pro SP2) from the old original 40GB IBM Deskstar to a new 500GB Western Digital – both are IDE type drives. I cloned from the old disk (master) to the new disk (slave) using Acronis TI Home 2009 and then put the new clone as master leaving the old disk disconnected. The new clone booted initially but stopped booting some days later – just a flashing/blinking cursor on the top left of the screen. I then returned the old disk as master and repeated the cloning process this time using Casper 5.0. Two weeks later the new disk stopped booting again with the same blinking cursor.

When I cloned the old 40GB disk onto the new (the whole disk - not just the C: drive), both Acronis and Casper saw the Dell hidden FAT 16 partition and both cloned it correctly onto the new disk and everything worked for a while. Booting seemed to fail after between 20 and 40 cold boots when there was a non-routine restart such as after running msconfig. If I was not in the habit of switching off the PC after each session, I may not have encountered the issue for a year.

I contacted Casper Technical Support. As the clone booted fine for several days, they pointed me to look for something outside the cloning process such as the BIOS. I had thought my BIOS was OK for the new larger disk for three reasons:

1. When I entered the BIOS, it saw the new drive and reported the correct capacity of 500GB.

2. There were Optiplex GX260 units out there with upgrades to 500GB drives and more – one website offers refurbished units up to 750GB.

3. When I reviewed the BIOS versions on the Dell website going from the A02 version on my PC to the latest A09 version, there was no talk of drive size in any of the Fixes and Enhancements for any of the versions.

Then I came on this article on drive size limitations and barriers

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_d...e_barriers.htm

and reading the section on BIOS ignorance, I looked at the Dell Website again very carefully. Lo and behold – in BIOS version A05 – not under the Fixes and Enhancements heading but under a heading unique to that version called Additional Information was some blurb that said version A05 now supported 48-Bit LBA for drives >137GB and also now incidentally supported booting from USB devices. Bingo – I needed BIOS version A05 or higher to support my new 500GB disk.

I downloaded the latest BIOS version A09 for the Optiplex GX260 from Dell. The Dell website provides very clear instruction on how to flash your BIOS. If you want to do this, read the instructions very carefully, then read them again and then again once more. Ensure you have no disruptions from kids, pets, parents, partners, ensure the mouse and keyboard are completely untouched by you hands or anything else during flashing and that the chances of you having a power cut are negligible. Get this wrong and you may well have a dead motherboard on your hands! In my case, this meant ensuring the BIOS was for the correct model of PC, I downloaded to a floppy as that was the Dell recommendation for my PC, followed the instruction to the letter including withdrawing the floppy at the end the flash process before booting with the new BIOS. All went well.

Now I installed my Casper clone (that had stopped booting) as master again and without any further repair or modification of any kind, it sprung to life, booted just fine and has stayed booting ever since ( 9 months and counting). Problem solved.

I have since fitted a second Western Digital 500GB drive as slave for backup and I am using Casper 5.0 to create incremental clones on it from the master. I have also kept my old original drive intact and stored in a safe and different place just in case!

For the Inspiron 9300, it looks like the BIOS does not support 48-Bit LBA for drives >137GB. There are other options in this case. The drive can be partitioned with partitions formatted or resized so that the operating system partition is < 137GB.