Boot XP from CD-Rom? Need help fellas...

[Donkey_Kong]

I have windows XP Media Edition and it won't boot up all the sudden. Maybe if I had a boot disc cd-rom? Can't find any cd that came with the system (lost it). Is there any otherway that I can boot windows? Keep in mind there is no floppy drive, only a cd drive.

Thanks in advance for any assistance!!

[Crax]

Try to be a bit more specific with your issue and it would be easier to recommend something.

But yes, you can get a copy of WMC and boot off the cd and do some recovery type things depending on the problem that you have

[Donkey_Kong]

Well after restarting by pressing the power button instead of loading windows normally i get a black screen. The only thing I'm able to do from that screen is the BIOS SETUP UTILITY. Here I am able to select Boot Device Priority. Since I'm unsuccessful booting from the HD maybe I could boot from CD Rom. Problem is I do not have a boot cd. Checked microsoft website and can't find a file to download (maybe not finding it).

Basically my question is this...Is there anything I can DL to make a boot cd?

Thanks!

[Samstag]

Get a live linux iso (knoppix, fedora, zenwalk, etc).  You're probably going to find that your hard drive is not available.

[shmokes]

Well, the answer to your question is no.  Microsoft does not provide Windows CDs for download (why would anyone buy it if they did), so you'll either need to find a friend with a disc, or download one illegally through bittorrent or something like that.

[shardian]

I had a boot problem last week. It would freeze up and never load. This happened while setting up an Ipod shuffle.

Make sure that you unplug all USB devices and that the cd drive is empty, then restart.

[sirwoogie]

You'll have to do some more basic troubleshooting first before we can narrow things down.

• You mention the system posts. Does the BIOS detect the hard drive at all?
• Is the hard drive in a RAID setup, or is it a single one?
• After BIOS POST, you only get a blank screen? Nothing else from the Bootloader?
• What were you doing with the machine prior to the failed reboot? Did you install any applications, OS upgrades, or mucking with system files?
• Did you add or remove any hardware (e.g. USB drives, new memory, etc.)?

As for a boot CD, you have a few options. You can get a number of Linux bootable CDs such as Knoppix or DOS CD's like Hirens BootCD and UBCD  to do some repair. You can also get a preinstall environment such as BartPE or WinPE, but this requires that you have your original media to build it. This basically gives you a Windows environment boot CD. You can also buy recovery software such as Winternals Administrators Pack. As Shmokes said, you can find many of these things from less sanctioned areas (e.g. full BartPE ISOs, etc.). But, you're not going to get those types of links here.

Hope this helps.

[pointdablame]

Get a live linux iso (knoppix, fedora, zenwalk, etc).  You're probably going to find that your hard drive is not available.

This would be my guess as well.  I'm betting your hard drive kicked the bucket... or you had some other type of hardware failure.

[Donkey_Kong]

Guys- Thanks for the help. Was able to finally boot up windows. Only problem now is that I lost about 200 gigs of data and I don't know how many programs(lots)




Ok done crying...Fresh start time...   

[shmokes]

If even part of the drive is accessible, probably all of your data is recoverable with cheap, over-the-counter recovery software.  If you've got important files in there, get them back before you go formatting your hard drive and losing it all forever (at least making it so only a data forensics lab can get it back)

[Samstag]

I strongly recommend everyone consider a RAID 5 setup.  It might seem a little expensive but it provides a big safety net when you get the inevitable drive failure.  I think all the recent versions of Windows (2000, XP, Vista?) support a software RAID configuration.  It requires a minimum of 3 drives and you lose 1 drive worth of space, but the extra money spent is worth the protection.  You can lose a whole drive and not lose any data and it doesn't take any effort.

I'm too lazy to make regular backups and I don't trust CD/DVD storage, so I keep everything important on RAID 5 arrays.

[DrewKaree]

Guys- Thanks for the help. Was able to finally boot up windows. Only problem now is that I lost about 200 gigs of data and I don't know how many programs(lots)

Woogie laid it out pretty well.  "can't boot windows" is just as generically UNhelpful as "finally able to boot up windows". 

STOP WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE DOING AND DO SOME DESCRIBING!  WE WANNA HELP, BUT YOU'RE NOT LETTING US!

"can't boot windows" could be any of the items Woogie described, as well as a host of others - WHAT does that phrase mean?  Am I gonna hafta drive to CO and thrash you one?

[Jerry Maguire] Help us.  Help you.  Help US.  Help YOU!  SHOW ME THE MOOONNNNNEEEEYYYYYYYY![/Jerry Maguire]

[Donkey_Kong]

Guys- Thanks for the help. Was able to finally boot up windows. Only problem now is that I lost about 200 gigs of data and I don't know how many programs(lots)

Woogie laid it out pretty well.  "can't boot windows" is just as generically UNhelpful as "finally able to boot up windows". 

STOP WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE DOING AND DO SOME DESCRIBING!  WE WANNA HELP, BUT YOU'RE NOT LETTING US!

"can't boot windows" could be any of the items Woogie described, as well as a host of others - WHAT does that phrase mean?  Am I gonna hafta drive to CO and thrash you one?

[Jerry Maguire] Help us.  Help you.  Help US.  Help YOU!  SHOW ME THE MOOONNNNNEEEEYYYYYYYY![/Jerry Maguire]

I just wanted to.........make you..................yell a lot.........

I WIN! 

[shmokes]

RAID 5 is often a difficult option either because many computer cases won't hold that many drives or because of expense -- three+ drives, hardware RAID controller (if you're serious enough to go RAID 5, do you really want to trust your data to a software RAID solution?).  For that matter, does the built-in software RAID support cover RAID 5 or just 0 and 1?).  At any rate, even a simple RAID 1 drive will cover your ass and cost you quite a bit less.  You only have to have two drives (one to use and one to mirror everything you do on the other), and it has the benefit of no down time if a drive goes bad.  RAID 5 is more cost effective as you get into larger sizes, but I think RAID 1 is more realistic for the casual user.

[Samstag]

RAID 5 is often a difficult option either because many computer cases won't hold that many drives or because of expense -- three+ drives, hardware RAID controller (if you're serious enough to go RAID 5, do you really want to trust your data to a software RAID solution?).  For that matter, does the built-in software RAID support cover RAID 5 or just 0 and 1?).  At any rate, even a simple RAID 1 drive will cover your ass and cost you quite a bit less.  You only have to have two drives (one to use and one to mirror everything you do on the other), and it has the benefit of no down time if a drive goes bad.  RAID 5 is more cost effective as you get into larger sizes, but I think RAID 1 is more realistic for the casual user.

RAID 5 is always more cost effective (and faster, even software-based) than 1, and also has the benefit of zero downtime.  In both setups that zero downtime assumes you're willing to run your system with no safey net until the drive is replaced.  Software RAID 5 is perfectly safe, reasonably fast, and definitely supported in XP (with a hack) and 2000.  RAID 1 is the easiest option, but how many people are willing to pay double for storage?

After seeing two seperate dual drive failures recently I'm tempted to bump my arrays up to RAID 6.

[DrewKaree]

RAID 1 is the easiest option, but how many people are willing to pay double for storage?

I'm guessing I'm missing something here, but from what you said, you need 3 drives.  Shmokes said RAID 1 needs 2 drives.  If people aren't going to be willing to pay double for storage, why would they then choose to shell out even more for RAID 5?

I don't much care either way (I'm following this for future use and simply for knowledge) so I don't have a stake in which musclecar means I have a bigger penis over another, so you'll have to dumb this down for one of those people who would fit the definition you're referring to - one who might not be willing to shell out double for storage.

Doesn't do very much good to seemingly talk down at the people you're trying to convince, and without further explanation that's sorely lacking from above, that's exactly what appears to be happening.

Just sayin'.....

[Samstag]

RAID 1 is the easiest option, but how many people are willing to pay double for storage?

I'm guessing I'm missing something here, but from what you said, you need 3 drives.  Shmokes said RAID 1 needs 2 drives.  If people aren't going to be willing to pay double for storage, why would they then choose to shell out even more for RAID 5?

I don't much care either way (I'm following this for future use and simply for knowledge) so I don't have a stake in which musclecar means I have a bigger penis over another, so you'll have to dumb this down for one of those people who would fit the definition you're referring to - one who might not be willing to shell out double for storage.

Doesn't do very much good to seemingly talk down at the people you're trying to convince, and without further explanation that's sorely lacking from above, that's exactly what appears to be happening.

Just sayin'.....

Sorry about that.  Shmokes understands what I was getting at but for those of you who aren't familiar with RAID levels, level 1 is a simple mirror.  Put two identical drives side by side and everything you write to one is immediately duplicated on the second.  As far as the user is concerned you'll only see one drive in Windows, but if you get a failure the other drive will keep you running.  RAID 5 is a more complex arrangement (under the hood) that writes some of the data on one drive, some on another, and recovery data on another.  For example, in a three-disk array when you write 2 gig of data you'll put 1G on drvie 1, 1G on drive 2, and 1G of useless (to you) parity data on drive 3.  So while a pair of 500G drives in RAID 1 gives you 500G of protected space, three 500G drives in RAID 5 gives you double the space.  Or you could get a deal on three 250G drives to get the same 500G total space at a lower cost.

So to summarize, RAID 1 requires double the cost because you need two drives for the space of one.  RAID 5 requires one extra drive in addition to however many you'll use for real storage.  Buy 3 drives and get the storage of one, buy 4 and get the storage of 3.  The more drives you buy the lower the cost per gig rather than the fixed cost of mirroring.

Also, in RAID 5 you get a performance increase because in writing half the data to one bit of hardware and half to another, you've got twice the theoretical bandwidth.  If you move a lot of data around it can make a big difference.  In this respect the more drives in your array the more bandwidth you get, up to limits in your controller hardware.

I don't mean to sound like I'm talking down to anyone, and I apologize if anyone is taking it that way.  I'm a RAID 5 fanboy! 

[boykster]

IMHO for workstations and personal computers, RAID1 makes MUCH more sense.  You can reliably do RAID1 with pretty much any standard computer hardware (software) and hardware/software solutions are relatively inexpensive.  True hardware raid cards are a bit more, but for most uses are a bit overkill.

I am a big fan of RAID5, but for larger scale storage systems, and non-volatile data.  The major downside with RAID5 for workstation/pc's is slow writes.  For every bit written to the array, a parity calculation needs to be done.  Unless you're running a dedicated hardware raid card that has a parity calculation engine onboard, this will slow the system, and noticeably slow writing to the disk.

The other advantage of RAID1 (other than lower entry cost) is that you can put 1 drive on each channel.  PATA IDE channels support 2 drives, but for a RAID application, you only want 1 drive per channel that is part of an array.  This is important because the PATA spec doesn't fully isolate the 2 drives on the same channel, and it is possible, in fact likely, that if a single drive on a channel fails, that both drives will report to the OS as at least "hung", if not failed.  This is due to the failed drive "taking down" the channel until a timeout occurs.  On a SATA board, this is less of an issue.

Obviously, RAID5 is more "cost effective" as you scale it up as no matter how many drives are in your array, you only "lose" 1 drive's worth of storage for parity data, whereas in RAID1 you dedicate 1/2 of the physical space to redundancy.  But again, most users won't have 4-8 drives in a workstation pc...you just wouldn't want to.  Its loud, hot, and would require a good sized case to support that many drives....

[DrewKaree]

When a drive fails in either system, how do you know it?  Does it throw an error, and is it the same regardless of hardware or software setup?

[Samstag]

It depends on where the RAID is handled.  If it's built into your motherboard or on a PCI card you'll get an error after POST (or during).  If you get a failure while the system is running then it depends on how your driver handles problems, but I'd assume they would all give you some sort of warning.  If the RAID is handled in the OS you'll get an instant warning as soon as it's recognized.

You may even be able to have it fire off an email and/or automatically shut the system down if you're away fromthe computer.  I have a linux server that does this.

[boykster]

When a drive fails in either system, how do you know it?  Does it throw an error, and is it the same regardless of hardware or software setup?

What Samstag said, but with a bit of elaboration:

Nearly every form of RAID (hardware or software, OS dependant or otherwise) has a mechanism for alerting the user that a failure has occured.  usually this is some form of monitoring application that either is just a nagging alert of some sort, or a more sophisticated process that can send an email, initiate a shutdown, etc.

I have 2 linux servers with 3ware hardware RAID cards that automatically shutdown after 5 minutes if an array becomes degraded. I also receive an email notifiying me of the degradataion and shutdown as well.  Additionally, 3ware provides a web based "console" that can be used to monitor the arrays, perform maintenance, etc.

I used to have a hardware/software RAID1 setup (on a dedicated card) on a workstation at work up until december.  There was a monitoring application that could be configured to do the same thing...popup alert of drive problem, shutdown the machine, etc.