"Error loading OS" Help!

SwampThing

Just turned on my machine that's been working fine, to get "Error loading OS" on a black screen!

I've not installed or changed anything, hardware or software during last working session.

I've tried the Recovery Console - ran fixboot and fixmbr commands - both ran fine but fixed nothing. When in the Recovery console, I can 'dir' all the files - they seem intact, it just won't boot.

OS is on a RAID 0 volume on the on-board RAID controller of an Intel D875PBZ mobo.

Any ideas?

aidan_walsh

Safe mode? If nothing else it might tell you where along the line its stopping, and thus what file is causing problems.

Ruu_Old

Try Step-by-Step mode, where you select the each file to load manually and see which file is causing the issues.

SwampThing

I'm not even getting that far. There's no OS detected to go into safe mode...

SwampThing

Any other suggestions?

I've tried doing a 'bootcfg /rebuild' from Recovery Console, but no joy.

I've read about doing a partial re-installation and usign a copy of my boot.ini file - I'm not too anxious to try that yet.

Anyone able to shed any light?

mr_disc

did u try to boot to a windows cd and do a repair from there ?

seamus

Well the fact that recovery console works and lets you see the files, suggests that the RAID controller is OK (or at least not totally screwed). You may want to read the manual or some resource about the RAID controller. Afaik, some controllers supply the MBR themselves, whereas others let the discs sort it out.

thebman

Go through XP install like your about to install it but don't. There is a repair option there if you press R. It'll just copy over all the windows files again and should fix the problem.

Probably a random windows error. Did you shut down properly when you turned it off last? Maybe something managed to happen then, don't ask me how though. Random windows errors are a mystery to everyone including Ms.

SwampThing

Turned out to be a BIOS issue!
The boot sequence was screwed up - how I don't know!

I've a couple of RAID controllers and it was trying to boot from the wrong one.

How does the BIOS settings change without manually changing them???

Very weid, but sorted. Thanks all for the suggestions.

seamus

SwampThing wrote:

How does the BIOS settings change without manually changing them???

If the battery is low or dead, the BIOS settings can sometimes revert to default.