[willyg]

My son has a Dell Latitude Cpi laptop running Windows2000. When I finished upgrading the anti-virus software I noticed the hard disk hadn't been defragged in almost a year, so I started the process. While it was running the dreaded blue screen of death with a 'kernel' error message popped up. Now the machine won't boot up.
I don't have an emergency repair disk(my bad), but I do have the setup boot disks. I've used them to get into the recovery console, but nothing seems to be helping to resolve this problem. The 'fixmbr' command just returns the C prompt, and the 'fixboot' command returns an error that the partition can't be found. Chkdsk returns a message that there are one or more unrecoverable errors.
I was going to try and reinstall Windows2000 but this machine only has one bay that you swap the floppy and CD drive into. When I boot from the floppies, the CD drive isn't recognized when I swap it in. Besides any other suggestions, is there a way to get the CD drive recognized?

Thanks,
Bill

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will it recognise the drive if you boot from it. You may need to set the VD drive as a boot device in bios, windows installation disks are boot disks as well so if you can get the CD drive going you are sorted.

[warriorscot]

will it recognise the drive if you boot from it. You may need to set the VD drive as a boot device in bios, windows installation disks are boot disks as well so if you can get the CD drive going you are sorted.

[willyg]

I was able to include the CD drive as a boot device, and successfully booted from the Win2000 installation disk. For the heck of it, I used the recovery console to run chkdsk again but got the same message about one or more unrecoverable errors. I also ran the 'diskpart' command which returned the following:
'C: 6190m MB Disk 0 at ID 0 on Bus 0 on atapi'. However, when I rebooted and selected to install Win2000, I received a message that no hard disk was recognized.
Any ideas?

Thanks,
Bil

[lionelhutz5]

I got that same message when I attempted to save my HP WinXP machine. All that would happen 99% of the time it would stay on the blue HP screen. Anyway, I got it to BIOS once, and it booted after the no operating system found and CMOS checksum bad error crap. I got to the installation and finally, no hard disk found. I never got their again...it seems that the disk had so many errors, Windows and BIOS was unable to recognize it (or so I was told.)

So, sorry for the long message, my idea is to try a new HD (I was told that would work for me, but my motherboard was also bad so that's why I think it MAY work for you.)

Jared