BleepingComputer.com: cannot boot windows XP cd

I am trying to reformat my hard drive. Both of my computers got a virus and I couldn't get rid of it so I want to reformat my computers. I successfully formatted my laptop with no problems. The desktop on the other hand is giving me some trouble.

When I start up the computer, I can hear the cd rom going, but it skips right past it and boots from the harddrive. I checkd the boot menu and the cd rom device is listed first... I don't know what else to try... please help!

Thank you in advance!

can you get past the windows login screen. if so I would suggest putting the cd in and going from there, no boot required.

yes i can

il try that now.

thanks!

girl15, on Mar 22 2009, 11:51 PM, said:

That will not reformat your HDD, Just put Windows on top of it all the stuff that is still there.

When it boots up you should get a message to press any Key to select the Windows Disk.

If that is not happening you will need to drain your CMOS to enable it. It does sometimes occur that Viruses and Malware can make subtle changes to prevent the System recognising the Windows Disk.

Post back and we can guide you through it.

In fact it didn't work anyways...

I looked thru the boot menu and made sure that the CD drive was listed first.

I even tried to disable the boot start up from hard drive so it would have to boot from the CD drive, but I got an error message saying something like drive not found and when i booted it up regularly and tried to run the CD I got an error message sayng to insert the CD when it was clearly in there.... so I am pretty sure that means that the computer no long recognizes the drive...

I am not sure what to do next....

Some old CD drives dont support booting off cds. Maybe the cd drive is faulty. Try attaching another cd drive and see if it works.

girl15, on Mar 23 2009, 03:18 AM, said:

OK, let's try this?

Take the side off your Computer and look at your MotherBoard for a disk just like a coin, similar to the following Picture? That is your CMOS Battery.



I strongly suspect that you have some corruption in your System that is affecting CSMOS, affecting you being able to access the Windows Disk, so listen up, please?

Before you touch any thing, make sure your Computer is switched off and completely unplugged from all Power. Then Grab a metal part of the Case to ground yourself to discharge any Static Electricity in you, gently remove the Battery for around 5 minutes, then reinsert it. There is a set of Jumpers near it, but their location varies so much, my above is simpler.

Reconnect your Machine and Start it up, making sure that the CD for Windows is in your CDRom or DVD, when it starts up it should then give you the option to "press any Key", do that.

Post back and let us know how it went? It should put you straight into Windows Set Up.

I don't really feel comfortable taking the computer apart... is there any other way to deal with the problem?

Do you have more than one cd drive in that computer?

yup.... both are listed under the drives, but neither exist in bios

Hmmm, if neither show up in bios I would say that is why you cannot boot from it. I have no idea how to fix that though, sorry. I am thinking if you have the option to boot from cd that they must be showing up somewhere in bios but I could be wrong.

Try going into bios and selecting auto-detect drives and see if they are found.

When I start my computer, it lists my cd drives right on the first screen and while I cannot say for sure that they show up in bios, as I have never looked specifically for them there, the fact that they show up on the first page at start up make me think they probably do.

The reason I asked if there was more than one drive is usually you can only boot from the first cd drive listed, atleast that is how it seems to be on my system, but if bios does not see them, that is probably the reason as I think the bios should show them.

This post has been edited by Stang777: 23 March 2009 - 07:15 PM