Inspiron 6000 XP/sp3 not booting

GunJack

in that case, sounds like either the hdd is on the way out or the IDE controller on the mobo is on way out...back up while you can

Did it boot to XP when the hdd was in the other system (possibly safe mde only) or did you only boot it from cd/usb to run the diagnostics?

Does that model have an extra connector/adapter between the hdd and the mobo connector ? If so, would be worth checking/subbing it..

OR, possible rootkit infection preventing it booting, try avira/kaspersky/dr web rescue cd and scan the drive. Or poss reformat and reinstall of XP

smos585

GunJack wrote: »

in that case, sounds like either the hdd is on the way out or the IDE controller on the mobo is on way out...back up while you can

Did it boot to XP when the hdd was in the other system (possibly safe mde only) or did you only boot it from cd/usb to run the diagnostics?

Does that model have an extra connector/adapter between the hdd and the mobo connector ? If so, would be worth checking/subbing it..

OR, possible rootkit infection preventing it booting, try avira/kaspersky/dr web rescue cd and scan the drive. Or poss reformat and reinstall of XP

This got me thinking.

So I tried another hdd with XP installed, to see if it would try to boot, subsequently expecting a bsod. However hallelujah, not only did it boot, but went on to boot into XP without any problem!!

So it was the hdd! Notwithstanding fixmbr, fixboot, Samsung diagnostics okay, and chkdsk /r okay, there must have been a corruption on sector 0 - not seen this before. A low level reformat of the hdd has sorted it (backed up of course).

Thanks everyone for your input and assisting in resolving this - great work, plus learnt something! If I could give double thanks I would.

GunJack

nice one it's always good when you crack a hard fault, even with a bit of help

debitcardmayhem

Good news, glad it's sorted

GunJack

see dc, we may be old duffers but we have our uses