Problems With Booting

[leofox]

Okay, the comp of a friend of my isn't working, it doesn't want to start windows. I'll try to tell the problem as detailed as possible:

first, he couldn't install DirectX (and other things too) because Windows XP said it didn't have a "microsoft logo" or something. Weird, cuz the DirectX came directly from Microsofts site.

Also, his comp ran slower because of some spyware/adware/other crap, and Ad-aWare and other programs didn't solve that. Soooo... he wanted to format his HD and start all over again. He asked me if i could help him.

First, we back-upped everything, by connecting and extra HD to the comp. That worked fine, except that windows was bugging about the windows logo crap. WE could succesfully move all the data.

Then, we tried to format the HD with windows. that didn't work, so we tried to do format c using MS-DOS (not the fake windows thing, but ms-dos booted from a windows XP created bootdisk). that didn't work either.

Then, we had the idea to set the other HD, that had w98 on it, as master, and the other one, with wXP as slave. We kinda messed with the jumpers, and i think this was the problem. That didn't work at all, it didn't open w98, but booted from the recovery CD that was in the drive (the recovery CD was specifically for that type of computer, Headstart by Dynabyte, and was supposed to be the wXP CD, he didn't get a wXP CD with his comp). The recovery CD tried to format the HD, but because the other one was set as master (the one we DIDN'T want to format), it didn't work out well, it said "can;t format drive".

Then, we restarded and it said "NDLTR not found" (not sure about the NDLTR, it could be NLDTR or something like that). We tried like every jumper position possible on the big HD (the one we DID want to format), and did the same without the small HD, but it still said that.

Then, we screwed out the HD to see the correct jumper position, and screwed it back in. We put the jumper in the right position, and tried again. No result.

Then, we decided to call a friend that knows more about comps. He said we had to use the recovery CD. So we put in the recovery CD, told bios to boot from it, and recovered to the big HD, the small one wasn;t connected anymore. That worked fine, it copied all the windows files to the HD. Then we restarted, but it said the same: NDLTR not found. We tried accesing the HD from ms-dos, but it couldn;t open it either. We also tried if the small HD would still work in the comp it came from, but that was messed up too.

so the main question is: how can his comp boot again with windows?

[JoeImp]

Why weren't you able to format the drives? Just stick the windows xp cd in the hard drive you want formatted, and disconnect the other one. Then just boot from cd, format, and re-install or whatever. Then connect the hard drive with the backup back in, and transfer everything over. Sorry if I got this messed up, too tired to read through that again.

Imp

[Arcane Wizard]

I would remove all partitions and stuff with fdisk, then format with format.com, then reinstall xp and have it reformat to ntfs.

Or throw in a good ol' linux isntall cd and use the partitioning software that comes with it.

I think they couldn't format because of 2 reasons:
1) format.com won't format when the drive is in use and can't always disconnect the drive, hence you need to boot from a bootdisk and run format.com from a different drive you're not formatting.
2) you need to use specific parameters to format NTFS partitions, and you'll need a format.com that supports them.. format c: /FS:NTFS

[leofox]

he has no windows xp cd, only a HeadStart recovery thingy.

I'll try using Linux.

[JoeImp]