Ancient XP laptop won't boot up....ideas before I bin it???!

DEBTMONKEY1A

Moto2-burnt to ISO, ran ok then got message 'no hard drives detected' (well the message was longer but can't recall it all-so thats the gist)-tried 'r' for recover & also 'enter' to set up xp. Confused.com? Time for the bin?

Moto2

Cheap replacement hard drive and reload XP?

Code

Wrong HAL. I bet it's got switched to acpi. You can fix it manually if you want to bother and have the skills, but the easiest way is to reinstall windows with standard HAL.

If you want to do it yourself, Google for something like "switch windows xp HAL from acpi to standard"

DEBTMONKEY1A

Moto2....cheapest I can see is around a tenner & I don't have a clue how to fit it or reload xp. I think I'll just learn not to impulse buy on the 2nd hand market & research it 1st. As pointed out by a fellow MSE'R there are plenty on Ebay (not looked yet at Amazon) for £50-£55. Not a social media junkie or play many games-may watch the odd film. I can't really think of anything I can use this old PC for. Think it's a lost cause...& only single core (my old base unit xp is dual core & since tweaking it (see other thread) it positively FLYS compared to before......but my main issue as well here is net speed-connection of 5998 which is pretty slow-& thats at the wired in base unit. Any wireless devices downstairs-especially in the evening -are very slow-my Samsung smart phone even says 'unstable internet' at times! No fibre due here yet. All wiring been replaced in full by openreach, all singing all dancing modem....its so bad that sometimes we can't even watch netflix!

DEBTMONKEY1A

Code thanks for the input but way way over my head-sorry (!)

Code

The simple version is that XP has 2 hardware app layers - one for original PC's with hard press power buttons etc (think 15 year old desktop PCs) and one for new PC's that have advanced power management hardware. If a standard PC ends up with an acpi HAL, it can't boot because it's kinda like the wrong drivers are installed, but this is at the deepest level of windows and interacts with all hardware.

Your best option is to completely wipe and reinstall windows, or use Linux options as other people have suggested (try Linux mint, very easy)

esuhl

As a quick, easy, temporary fix, you could try running a live Linux distribution. Just download an ISO image, burn it to CD (or USB), and boot from that.

You don't need to know anything about Linux. It should just boot up and connect to the internet automatically.

Slax is a nice, fast, easy-to-use live linux distro:
https://www.slax.org/

At least you could make sure the PC is actually working before you try reinstalling Windows or whatever.

bat999

Code wrote: »

... or use Linux options as other people have suggested (try Linux mint, very easy)...

+1 for that.
At least burn the Mint iso to disc/usb to try it first.
From here ---> https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=221

DEBTMONKEY1A

Thanks guys-will give it a go! Shame to bin it....at least it will show if laptop is totaly f***ed or not! Strangely I did the hard disc checker on the F10 menu & it said it was fine, but on trying the recovery disc it just said 'no hard drive available'...mystery! Will have a crack tomorrow & update. Again-thanks for all the support.

Anthorn

+1 for Linux Mint. I have it on my Lenovo laptop. Easy to install and it comes with just about everything. The only problem is in knowing that Linux is not Windows and you can't install and run Windows programs in it ... unless you run them in a Linux program called "Wine" or install Windows itself in "Virtualbox".

Back to XP on the old computer, the way to proceed is the way we have always proceeded and booting with a DOS floppy disk. You can pick them up on ebay cheaply or DOS can be downloaded for free - try Softpedia. The only problem then is a floppy disk drive - I got an external USB floppy drive from Amazon for less than a tenner. If there is no USB port then you're probably stuck with installing an internal floppy drive.