Mrs Red's laptop screen went blank then came up with this message
Serching for boot record from floppy.....not found
Serching for boot record from CDROM...not found
Serching for boot record from IDI-0......OK
Error loading operating system....
Tried turning off and on, same message. Help.
First i'll decode the message for you, it just means it tries to boot from floppy, then cd-rom then hard drive, are you sure it wasn't IDE-0 not IDI ? Anyway, it detects the hard drive ok but then can't load the OS. Did you actually smack the PC? That may have corrupted some files and messed windows up. I assume you didn't (but bad beats and laptops dont mix), the OS can just get corrupted by other software or if its just not your day and there is a write error in an important part of the OS.
To fix it you will need your windows CD-ROM. Hopefully you have a proper CD and not just a recovery CD that a lot of laptops come with. The good news is that the PC is already set to boot from CD-ROM before hard disk so you can put the disk in and don't need to change the boot order in the BIOS. Try the recovery console first and if that doesn't work a reinstall of windows.
From windows site:
1. Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted. (Press Any key to boot from CDROM)
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console. (probably type 1 then enter)
4. When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
5. At the command prompt, type the appropriate commands to diagnose and repair your Windows XP installation.
For a list of commands that are available in Recovery Console, type recovery console commands or help at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
For information about a specific command, type help commandname at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
6. To exit the Recovery Console and restart the computer, type exit at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
OK, now the commands worth trying are:
fixboot and fixmbr (type fixboot then enter and follow instructions, i dont remember what exactly happens! then run fixmbr the same way)
after they have run, restart by typing exit and enter
hopefully that will sort out the boot files and windows will run. if not you will need to reinstall windows. just reboot from the CD again but instead of pressin r to run recovery console follow the instructions through to install windows, there is an option to repair you current installation which you can try if you want but that has never been successful for me before, so if you have any time restrainsts go straight for a new install.
Usally when i reinstall windows i format the PC, but this is only necessary if you had junk, adware, too many unused programs, startup items etc you want to get rid of. If you reinstall windows over the top without formatting then all your my documents will still be there (although maybe in an admin.old folder or something like that depending on your usernames). If you reinstall windows you will also need to reinstall all programs that you had before too, eg office, poker, paint shop pro, dvd players. even though you have not deleted the software they need reinstalling, which is why i usually format anyway.
Finally, whether you format or not, if you have anything you can't bear to loose, firstly, it should already have been backed up, but if it isn't then you want to get that backed up before you mess about with any of this, just incase! And its possible (although maybe not, sometimes windows just gets messed up) that your hard drive is starting to fail and if thats the case you need to backup all important docs/emails/photos/hand histories NOW.This got a bit long, and i may have gone a bit off track. Let me know where you get upto and if you need more help!
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