I am trying to fix my mother-i (Question 15327)| Data Doctors Free Help

I am trying to fix my mother-in-laws dead computer which her grandchildren messed up and to make it worse, their dad started to mess around with it also. It is a Dell 2400 series 2mhz computer with windows XP sp1 and when I try to boot it up, it stops at the Dell Window where there is a bar on the bottom that moves and then goes to the next phase. After a minute, a message pops up saying "primary drive 1 not found and to strike F1 key to continue, F2 to run setup utility. I inserted the Dell OS cd and pressed F12 and selected CD to try to boot from the OS cd. It came up to install or to repair and I chose repair. It came up to C:\windows but I could not get to the root folder c:. Did the root get deleted somehow?? Normally I would think that in order to delete the root, you would have to remove the subfolders first. Am I correct?? I tried to reinstall windows and it said it is not good to install with another OS so should I remove the partition and format the drive? All replies and suggestions will be appreciated.

This question was answered on November 29, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

It may be too late, but you might try this:

boot with the CD

press R to load recovbery console

type "bootcfg" without the quotes

boot .ini errors causing setup to not see the XP OS should be fixed

now try the repair install

Posted by Michael of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 29, 2004

We help people with technology! It's what we do.
Contact or Schedule an Appointment with a location for help!