Cant 'Boot' from XP CD

kingarthur

Beta member
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2
Hi,
Need some help with my daughters XP Home Premium desktop .
Few days ago the pc would not boot up correctly, it gets as far as the windows screen with the scrolling bar but just before you would expect the desktop to appear I get a BSOD for a second and it restarts (and so on). The error on the bsod is UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.
Now when I try to boot from my XP CD to enter the recovery console to try a repair the computer finds the cd and gets as far as 'Press any key to boot from CD', when I then try to press any key I get no response from the keyboard (I have tried an alternative p/s2 keyboard but I get the same result). I just cant get past the 'Press any key' window.
So, in summary I appear to have an error which I cant repair because I cant access the recovery on the XP CD.
Could it be something serious like motherboard failure or HD failure?

I cant even attempt a total format and re-install of XP because the computer is not reading the CD.

Please help!
 
Can you boot into safe mode?

If you haven't already tried, use F8 to boot into safe mode with command prompt and run a chkdsk /r to clear up any hard drive issues.

From the same environment you could also access system restore to roll the system back - this will negate any changes to system files causing the issue.

Does your keyboard work at all? can you enter BIOS for example?
 
No, can't boot into safe mode. System just crashes again with previous mentioned bsod. It then restarts and so on.

Sorry, yes the keyboard works fine for the BIOs etc but as soon as I try to boot from the cd it blanks.
I am wondering if the XP CD is damaged.
Are all XP cd's bootable, think it was purchased as a system builders os.
 
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