Symptoms of problems in this group are:
?The computer hangs immediately after the Power On Self Test (POST).
?You do not see the boot loader screen.
?You receive messages such as:
?Missing operating system.
?A disk read error occurred.
?Insert a system diskette and restart the system.
?Invalid partition table.
?Hard Disk Error.
?Hard Disk Absent/Failed.
It is possible that you will not be able to start your computer to troubleshoot the problem. If all of your primary partitions are NTFS, using MS-DOS-based utilities will not do much good. If you have created a Windows NT startup floppy disk, as described in Chapter 5, ?Preparing for and Performing Recovery,? you can try using that disk. If you cannot start the computer by usingyour Windows NT startup floppy disk, and repairing your system by using the Emergency Repair Disk does not fix the problem, you can try removing it from the computer and installing it as a second disk on another Windows NT computer. You can then useWindows NT-based utilities for troubleshooting.
Caution Moving disks between computers is not supported because of problems that can arise when the disk controllers on the two systems are incompatible or are configured differently. However, if your two computers are configured the same, you might be able to identify and correct the problem.
The problem could be one of the following:
? There is no system partition on the first hard disk.
? The Master Boot Record is corrupt.
? The Partition Boot Sector is corrupt.
? The Boot.ini file is missing.
? The Windows NT boot loader, NTLDR, is missing or corrupt.
? The Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) is corrupt, or the CMOS battery is run down.
? Hardware has malfunctioned.
See Chapter 6 of the Windows NT 4.0 resouce kit for complete troubleshooting steps. You should try these before you wipe and replace.
Pete
