XP restore repeats and never restores

[electronicchild]

I thought I had a HD crash. Computer was lagging badly, I restarted, and it didn't recognize any boot device. I moved the master drive to my other computer (slaved it of course) but still couldn't access it. I had a spare drive at this point so I hooked it up and used the restore disc (XP home). Everything proceeds normally until restore finishes installing new files and restarts the pc then the whole cycle begins again as if it never began! I have been through this 3 times--tried formatting, deleting partitions, and doing a fresh install, but on each restart it acts like there's nothing there! Help!

Its a Dell Pentium 4 running XP home

Could this be a hardware issue other than the HDD?

 

[PhillipBelcher]

As you know, once the setup has copied the setup files the computer will restart, at this time you should boot into the bios and set the boot order to the hard drive 1st. Sometime your bios will reconize the cd rom and defualt to begin the windows fresh install setup. Try this and let me know how you make out!

Thanks

Phil

 

[electronicchild]

Hey phil,

I thought about that, and I tried that, but when it attempts to boot from hard drive it doesn't recognize an opperating system and it goes on to the next drive (note: this is the new HD not the one i thought crashed). It says the setup files are installing when I restore and I don't get any errors, but it keeps acting like nothing is there.

 

[PhillipBelcher]

maybe junk ide cable?

 

[electronicchild]

Ok, i don't think the cable is the problem because...while it doesn't "recognize a boot device" on startup, the partitions and everything are viewable and changeable, so it is reading the drive there it is just not booting from it. If i set it to boot from HDD 1st it simply tells me to insert the opperating sys disc. Info is being exchanged, and files are being installed (it recognizes that windows folders exist on the drive according to the restore process) but somehow they are being bypassed in the boot process.

 

[PhillipBelcher]

Is the OS CD scratched or dirty? Maybe its not loading the boot files because it cannot read them correctly. Also try booting off a 3.5 floppy into ms-dos and see it you can get the directory off the C:\ drive/

to do this just go to the c: and type in dir. What does it list?

 

[electronicchild]

hey hey hey!
Phil, i may have to repent...i think it was the IDE cable. I thought i might as well give it a shot since i had a few spares lying around, now the restore disc is doing its job. Problem solved! Thanks for the info!