[comfortablynumb]

hi all.
i am not able to boot through my floppy or cd drive..the cd or floppy is read by the computer but i get a blank screen with a blinking cursor and the computer stops responding.. .i was able to boot it hours ago..but suddenly there was a power failure during which i was running patrition magic..after the power was restored i am not able to boot thorugh my floppy or cd drive, although i am able to boot through my hard disk..my os is win xp and i need to reformat my hard drive...can someone tell me whats wrong..?

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What floppy disk are you trying to boot from? ie is it a win98 boot disk or what?

[Samm]

What floppy disk are you trying to boot from? ie is it a win98 boot disk or what?

[greyknight17]

Could be a damaged master boot record. Maybe try using the XP CD to go into the recovery console and do a repair. Try using this command in the recovery console command prompt -> fixmbr and hit Enter. See if that will repair it.

[comfortablynumb]

i've solved the problem..the problem was that just before the power failure occured, a certain partition of the hard disk was being formatted into some format other than FAT. .so the partition remained in this format when the power was restored...thewindows 98 floppy and the xp cd didnt recognise this partition. that is why the computer and always hung up during starup. when i reformatted that damaged partition back to FAT32, everything was back to normal...thanx everyone