Ok I’ve been running into a wall. My other computer the dell, recently had a virus. I thought I had gotten it cleaned off. When I went to restart the computer
all I would get after the dell splash screen was a blinking “_”. After some reading it sounded like the MBR was messed up. So I attempted ti boot off of my windows xp disc to get to the recovery console and attempt to fix it. I proceeded to set the bios to boot from the dvd-rom first and then the floppy disk and then the hard drive. I managed to get the recovery console up and running. I then proceed to use the command fixboot at the command prompt. After letting it do its thing I restarted the computer. And still no luck with the hard drive booting up. So I figured I would try fixmbr in the recovery console next. So I put my xp disc back into the dvd-rom and did the same thing as before and set the dvd to boot then the floppy then the hard drive. Only this time no luck.
Here is what I have tried since:
Made sure all the cables were good and snug.
I’ve tried a different boot disk ultimate boot disc.
I’ve even tried playing with the jumpers on the dvd rom and setting it from cable select to master. As well as having the bios auto detect the IDE settings with the key combo (num, scroll, caps lock on, alt + e and then alt + f)
I’ve also pushed f12 to choose the boot device. It shows all the devices both dvd roms and the hard drive. When I select the dvd rom nothing happens. I maybe wrong but hardware should be ok. I did the IDE diagnostic under the same boot menu and it came back with all the devices.
What I may try is to see if I can hook up the hard drive with a IDE to usb cable to my other computer and see if I can repair it that way. (Any suggestions or comments?)
I would try and use a floppy disk but I haven’t seen one of those since I was back in school.
