NET Book won't boot

Factual Questions
1

I’m probably screwed, but I’ll ask anyway.

It’s an Acer Aspire 1 Netbook. XP home. It boots to a flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner. It will NOT boot to Safe Mode. I can get to the bios though.

Booting from an external CD starts to work, and it looks like it’s trying to load windows, but then I get a blue screen with -
*
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK / F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.*

None of which I can do unless, ya know, I can boot the machine.

I also tried booting to an Ubuntu CD. But that does not work either. Same flashing cursor.

Any ideas?

2

Wow.

I was going to suggest the Ubuntu thing, but you’ve already tried that.

Sounds like a hardware problem. How easily is it to pull the hard drive out of that particular netbook? If you can get the drive out, maybe you can put it in an enclosure and test it.

3

If you can’t boot from the Unbuntu CD, it sounds like you are screwed to me also. I assume that running XP home means you computer is out of warranty. If you have any important data, then buy a 2.5 inch usb enclosure to put your hard drive in and you might get your data back.

4

And if the problem is the hard drive, you should be able to buy another one for 50 bucks, whack it in the Netbook, install an operating system, and be back up and running.

Just hope that the data on the current hard drive is backed up somewhere.

5

Thanks everyone. Sorta figured I was up a creek. No real important data on it, just a pain in the ass to loose a machine.

Might look into a usb enclosure. Never heard of it before.

6

You may have a boot sector virus, or possibly just a bad boot sector. Even when booting from a CD/DVD/USB stick, the system will look at the boot sector for the Master Boot Record, to determine if the installed hard drive has a bootable OS installed or not (this is how the Windows install disc knows if you’ve already installed Windows). If an error is detected, you won’t be able to proceed.

As for USB enclosures, for ease of use, I’d recommend an open dock, like this (mods, is a product link to an external site ok?). You don’t have to assemble anything - you just plug the dock into a PC, and plug the drive into the dock, and you’re good to go.

7

Seconded. I have two of these, and they work great.

8

Thanks both of you. I just ordered a new Toshiba netbook and that usb adapter (maybe the drive is still good :shrug: )

9

It shouldn’t be hard to remove the hard drive from the boot sequence in the BIOS to check that.

10

Out of curiosity, when you tried booting to Ubuntu, did you actually try booting from a bootable USB memory stick, or just a CD?

11

Might he have to disconnect the hard drive entirely?

12

OS restore procedure (will wipe disk)

13

I assume you already tried re-seating your hard drive and re-seating your memory modules before posting.

14

chopler - Tried both USB and CD for Ubuntu.

JoelUpChurch - I can move the hard drive in the boot sequence, but there is not an option to totally remove it that I see. USB is before the hard drive in the sequence.

astro - I have reseated the componants. And I would rather not just wipe the hard drive. I ordered a USB enclosures for the hard drive and another netbook. Don’t think there is anything critical on the drive, but if it is OK (which I doubt) I would like to be able to get at it.

Not so much of an money issue as a time/inconvienience issue.