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Windows will not start up!


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#1
nada

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I start my computer and after the black screen where you can press del to go into BIOS, a black screen appears saying "Press a key to Reboot." It happens everytime I reboot and reset my computer. Any ideas? Thank you!
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#2
BabyTech

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is there anything else written? things like unmountable drive, no boot sector, non-system disk
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#3
nada

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no just "PRESS A KEY TO REBOOT"
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#4
BabyTech

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sounds to me like your boot records are corrupted
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#5
nada

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so does that mean i have to get a new harddrive?
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#6
gerryf

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Gotta saymore than that....nonsystem disk, press any key to reboot?

Check to make sure there isno floppy disk in the floppy drive
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#7
nada

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nope no floppy and that's the only thing there. press a key to reboot. might the connector be jammed?
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#8
gerryf

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what can you tell us about the computer? Model/Make

The only thing that makes sense is a failing RAID controller or RAID config if that is the ONLY Message you are getting.
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#9
gerryf

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wait a minute...that's not the only thing...do you have a windows xp disk so we can get into recovery console...I think Babytech is on to something...you could be getting that if your partition boot sector is hosed (not the master boot sector.
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#10
nada

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it's my really old computer. It's an Intel, Asus P3B-F motherboard. i have a windows xp cd but when i put it in, the computer won't give me an option to boot from it. It just coughs up that screen.
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#11
BabyTech

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you would need to change your boot order in your bios to read from cd first.
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#12
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but my computer won't detect any harddrives or cd drives. when i start my computer, next to the primary master it says NONE and next to secondary master, there is a harddrive i don't use. my cd drive won't be detected and i can't change the boot order in my BIOS.
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#13
BabyTech

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First of all, what do you mean you can't change the boot order? even if no drives are detected, you should be able to change it.

As far as your system not detecting any physical drives, have you changed any of the physical connections? if not your problem is gonna be a lot bigger then what we started with.
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#14
gerryf

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physical cable might have slipped out of the slot
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#15
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well it won't detect any physical drives. i think something slipped out too but everything looks fine. can i just try plugging random data cables into this one empty data cable slot on my motherboard? there's two but one's already plugged in so i'm not sure if i just start plugging random things in. Thanks!
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