Boot from disk question

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Boot from disk question

Rickles

2938 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#91551 15-Oct-2011 10:34

Hi,

When one uses the original XP disk to boot a computer, either for a fresh install or to use the Recovery Console, a whole heap of drivers and essential files etc are loaded.

Questions: Are these files installed onto the hard drive or do they just reside in memory until the 'install XP' button is pushed later in the process?

Tks,

R.

gzt

17157 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#533649 15-Oct-2011 12:08

Nothing is changed until you install (or use the partitioning/formatting utility)..

Whole lot less sure about the Recovery Console, not sure if XP has one of those? Probably the same though, nothing will happen until you choose an action.

Rickles

2938 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#533718 15-Oct-2011 15:01

gxt ... just to clarify, you are saying it all sits in RAM until proper installation starts?

R.

boby55

1539 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#533720 15-Oct-2011 15:14

All the files are stored on your RAM, Only once you make it past the "Select / Format disc" stage are files copied to your hard drive.

gzt

17157 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#533721 15-Oct-2011 15:15

What exactly are you planning to do? It might be important..

Rickles

2938 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#533726 15-Oct-2011 15:35

Andrew - thanks for that, I windered because the hard drive light does flicker during the process.

gzt - the reason I ask is because I've a laptop (3-year old Dell Inspiron) that keeps returning a 'no internal disk found' failure message when booting. The drive itself runs perfectly and has no errors when used externally on another machine. I also used a replacement hard drive in the Dell with same problem, so suspect a motherboard and/or disk controller failure.

However, what made me ask the original question is, as I said above, the hard drive light did flash giving the impression of having data written to it during the O/S reinstallation process.

Anybody know of further tests to ascertain fault (I also ensured hard drive contacts were clean, drive seated correctly, etc).

R.

gzt

17157 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#533730 15-Oct-2011 15:47

You could consider inspecting the bios to see if the drive is correctly set up in there, or just run a bios reset and see if it will detect it automatically.

It would be interesting to know if it can boot that drive from usb on that machine, assuming the bios is capable of usb boot.

Also, you could consider booting a system disk like GParted, which will give you a lot more information than the XP disk. The XP disk will be enough to see if windows can see the drive. In this case though, it looks like not even the bios is seeing it.

Rickles

2938 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#533732 15-Oct-2011 15:58

gzt - Forgot aboutGParted, and I've got it sitting here in plain sight ... but won't that just look at the drive itself, not if the machine 'recognises' it as being installed? The XP installation disks (original and slipstreamed) all boot the machine, but it all stops at the installation stage.

Re BIOS, I have tried all settings available (had another laptop recently that was doing same thing, but simply changing disk drive control from RAID/AHCI to SATA ONLY worked a treat), but nothing helps.

R.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

gzt

17157 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#533733 15-Oct-2011 16:01

Rickles: gzt - Forgot aboutGParted, and I've got it sitting here in plain sight ... but won't that just look at the drive itself, not if the machine 'recognises' it as being installed?

Yes, that is correct.

gzt

17157 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#533736 15-Oct-2011 16:04

Assuming you are comfortable with the risks, reflashing the bios might be worth a go. Unlikely it will make any difference, but it would be on my list.

Rickles

2938 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#533741 15-Oct-2011 16:13

gzt - BIOS reflash might be an option if all else fails . The machine is just spare parts at the moment, which is sad for a 3-year old laptop.

R.