Posts: 10,210
Threads: 304
Joined: Jan 2007
Reputation:
50
this tends to happen when windows xp is seriously corrupted or your hard drive master boot record has been deleted by a virus or a faulty hard drive.
there is a few things you can look at, go in to the bios of that imedia and check to see if the hard drive is still being listed in the boot options.
if its missing the hard drive maybe past it.
i can't fully remember the recovery of the imedia range of desktops but i think its F11 at bios start up that starts the recovery.
thats as long as the recovery partition is intact on the hard drive and indeed if the hard drive is working.
if you can get that to start you stand a chance of getting the pc back to working order at factory settings.
look on the back of that imedia and see if there is a PN ( part number ) listed.
P/B list the imedia by its part number these days and not the model number.
i wish they would make up their minds at P/B
for years it was by model then by SN number and now its by PN
Posts: 4
Threads: 1
Joined: Mar 2012
Reputation:
0
I checked the bios and the hard drive is listed in the options . I then tried the F11 and it gave me 2 options
first - was to restore xp system to a previous date -last week it doesn't give me the option of choosing a date. It then goes full circle and ends up back on the original screen advising NTDLR is missing.
The 2nd option left is the recovery program which restores it to the day it was purchased i.e factory settings but this would probably mean I'll lose everything all my music, photo's and documents stored on the computer. Is there a way round this. by downloading something onto my laoptop and putting a disc in and going back say maybe a month or two?
forgot to add the PB no.is 34244901
Posts: 10,210
Threads: 304
Joined: Jan 2007
Reputation:
50
if i was faced with this problem this is what i would do.
windows can't restore from a restore point as that would seem to be corrupted as well.
this leave you the main option of restoring back to factory settings and yes this will delete everything on the hard drive and install a clean copy of windows xp.
your faced now with data recovery problem and the best way out of that would be to remove the hard drive from the pc and ask a friend to connect it as a slave device in their pc, access your files that way and save them put the drive back in yoru machine and do the full restore.
or paying for a windows xp full install disk or if any of your friends have a disk borrow it as this is a shop bought pc the windows key should be on a sticker on the side of the case.
the idea is you use their disk and your key, there is nothing microsoft can do about that as your still using your paid for key in windows.
when you go to install windows it will give you two options to repair the current install.
skip the first offer to repair and carry on with the install, when windows ask what drive and partation to use you choose the one that has xp on it now, again windows will offer to repair.
select that option and tell it to save all the current files in to a folder.
this is not fool proof as i have seen windows delete things people wanted to keep but the idea is it backs up the my docs folder and windows in to a folder on your c drive, deletes the old windows folder and start up files and install's a clean copy.
Posts: 4
Threads: 1
Joined: Mar 2012
Reputation:
0
Thanks for your reply, you were up late weren't you! I tried the 2nd option thinking it was going to restore back to factory settings and I would lose everything but I thought I'd do this as didn't know anyone who could help out. This took approx 4 hrs to run through this but it surprised me because it saved my files to the c and d drive. I have lost a few files like nero and norton and a few others that I can't think of at this time. Really pleased though its working again. I think I need to make sure I do a back up disc just in case a simillar thing happens again. How would I do this. I know it may sound simple to you but I really don't know where to start?.
Posts: 4
Threads: 1
Joined: Mar 2012
Reputation:
0
thanks will try this.
Thanks for your help. Your site is really easy to use, find information on and open/reply to posts. I will keep coming back to time and time again. Its brilliant and so are you - well almost 99%.
Posts: 10,210
Threads: 304
Joined: Jan 2007
Reputation:
50
thank your for your kind words
no ones a perfect 100% lol if anybody say's they are then its a big fat lie lol
as some of my older members will tell you if you get a problem with a pc or laptop come and talk to davey and i will try my very best to help you and try and put the normal tech speak in to normal words that most people understand.
