Posted: 5/28/2007 7:14:31 AM EDT
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I bought this HP desktop from a pawn shop, and I plan on using if for a file server. First, I wiped the HD's since they had loads of personal information, and did a fresh load of XP on it. Then I pulled those HD's (40 Gb) units, and put in my old 80 Gb HD's, and threw my XP disc in the CD rom drive. Now I'm showing a "NTLDR missing Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart", and it refuses to read off of my XP disc. I tried pulling the battery to reset the BIOS, but still no help. How can I get this to load my XP disc? Now my plan for this is to buy two EIDE controller cards for an eventual 4 master/slave channels, and stuffing as much storage into this as possible. WTF am I missing here that I'm not seeing before? Also, is there a way to pull the movies that I recorded on my DVR into a computer? |
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It looks like its not trying to boot off the CD and its hitting one of the HDs that had a previous installation on it. Try pulling the drives out and see if it boots off the CD. Then make sure both drives are set "cable select". Hopefully this works and further reconfiguration won't be required. Also, your eventual plans to stuff many more drives into that system may overload the power supply. Possible outcomes are, a computer that reboots under high load, a computer that turns off at high load, a computer that turns on and then off or just doesn't turn on, or a power supply that releases the magic smoke. Depending on the DVR some allow you to store movies on computer systems. I know there are several linux programs that mimmick DVRs and let you fool the DVR into transferring your recorded movies onto a computer. There may be a windows counterpart. -Foxxz |
Check your Hard Drive cables and make sure they are inserted correctly and firmly. It cannot read the drive for startup |
| CDROM is set as first priority for boot, and the CDROM is jumpered for Master on it's own EIDE Channel. The two HD's are on a separate channel with one set as master and one as slave with the proper positions on the IDE cable. I'll try the Cable select route and see if that fixes everything. The 2 80 Gb HD's did have windows set up on them in a RAID 0 array, but in the one time that I was able to get it to boot with both 40 GB drives in, I was successfull in formatting both drives. |
Alot of those brand new computers come from the factory "cable select" and operate best at that config. |
check in the bios to make sure all drives are being detected correctly. almost without a doubt the NTDLR error means its trying to boot from an HDD that still has an MBR(master boot record) to boot a windows install that does not exist becuase it was deleted. when you format drives, dont use the old format c: stuff. get a good boot and nuke cd to really wipe the drives clean. or learn to format /MBR at least 
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Ok small update. I swapped all the jumpers to Cable Select, and I still have the NTLDR message. I double checked my boot priority, and it's still listed as CDROM, Floppy, Network, HD. I yanked the HD IDE cable for the HD's out, and also swapped the CDROM IDE cable over to the IDE 1 slot. Now I have an Operating System Not Found message. It's 12:30 and I need bed so I'm done for the day. As it sits, no floppy in the 3.5" drive, XP CD in, and no magic. All connected drives are showing up during startup with the correct manufacturer prefixes and model numbers. |
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I was doing something similar on an HP & wound up having to go to Microsoft web site & download a file that creates 6 or 7 floppies that will boot the computer & install the drivers that are missing & will then allow you to install from the CD drive. A friend reported a similar problem & was able to use an XP disc with SP 2 slipstreamed on the disc & had no other problems. Hope this helps. |
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I've worked on more than a few older HP's and Sonys that have used Adaptec IDE controller PCI cards as the CD/DVD drive controller, If that's the case you have to boot to a DOS floppy with the adaptec drivers, MSCDEX.EXE and all that crap. Crack the case and pray that you don't find a promise card or an adaptec card driving the CD/DVD drives. |
Try HP's support Web site. It should have the documentation you need. welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html?pageDisplay=support |