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Shrimpo

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S

Shrimpo

151 Posts

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November 26th, 2011 04:00

Inspiron 6000 will not boot to XP

Our old I6000 will not boot to XP Home.  It continuously loops thru the Dell logo boot screen (I guess that is what it is called), with the F2 and F12 options, but will not load Windows.  The HDD was replaced about a year and a half ago, and has worked fine up until recently.  I have tried reformatting the hard drive and have run chkdsk C:  /r via the Recovery Console, neither of which has resolved the problem.  My suspicion is another bad hard drive, but would appreciate any additional suggestions any of you may have.  Any ideas much appreciated.

Thanks!

~Ed

  • S

    Shrimpo

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 04:00

    The HD is a 120GB and has performed well for about a year and a half.

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    Shrimpo

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 04:00

    I'll need a little help with that one.  It is a WD drive, but I do not know how to run diagnostics on it.  

  • E

    ejn63

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 04:00

    What do the manufacturer diagnostics reveal about the condition of the drive?

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    ejn63

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 04:00

    You can download an image of a bootable diagnostic CD (see below).  Use your CD writing software on another system to burn the image to a CD.  Then boot the notebook from the CD and run a full drive diagnostic.

    support.wdc.com/.../download.asp

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    ejn63

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 04:00

    How large is the replacement hard drive, and if it's over 120G, did you partition it and install Windows below the 120G barrier?

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    Shrimpo

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 06:00

    Thanks!  I'll give that a shot as soon as I get time today or tomorrow.

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    Shrimpo

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 17:00

    Okay - I ran the WD diagnostics.  No errors found, either in the Quick Test or Full Media Scan.  Next step or suggestion?

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    Shrimpo

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 17:00

    Also just noticed that this error msg is appearing VERY briefly in the upper left corner of the screen during the repeating attempts to boot:

    INVALID BOOT.INI File

    Booting from C: \windows\

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    ejn63

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 17:00

    That would point to the hard drive being OK.  Try reseating (remove and reinstall) both memory modules.  

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    Shrimpo

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    Posted November 26th, 2011 18:00

    I found this procedure prior to your post, above, and followed the instructions.  It did not help.

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