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I'm trying to get my grandma's computer to work and am stumped. At first, the culprit was the video card. But now, after taking that out and setting bios to use onboard video, it gets stuck a few seconds into windows loading and reboots. Same thing happens when I try to start in safe mode. I don't have another pci video card, otherwise I would try that out.
I've tried moving the ram around on the motherboard and taking one out, putting the other in, etc.

Normally, I would pop in the windows XP cd to try to repair the os, but now the computer won't boot from cd, no matter what changes I make in bios for devices to boot from. I've tried two different xp disks and a few linux disks to try to make the pc boot. No luck. Even tried different cd drives.
I guess I could try to find a floppy disk to see if I can boot with that, but I'm not sure what good that would do since I need the windows xp cd to do the repair.

The motherboard is an old Dell Optiplex I found in a dumpster a couple years ago, that was virus ridden and I cleaned it out. I may just have to tell her that the computer is toast and help her find a different one unless anyone else has any ideas.Someone threw in in the dumpster before because it was toast then!no, actually they threw it away because it had over 100 worms and trojans and were either too inept to fix it or didn't have the time to repair it. The hardware was sound and worked fine while it was in my care, running windows xp and/or opensuse for two years.
Anyone else. Since you cant boot from CD OS XP disc & as you say tried changing your boot order in bios i would SUSPECT your HD is toasthow would that affect booting from CD? Live CD's don't need the hard drive.So what you are telling me you can run a game CD ECT? Quote from: michaewlewis on June 16, 2008, 04:24:00 PM

I'm trying to get my grandma's computer to work and am stumped. At first, the culprit was the video card.

Did sound like a conflict with graphics card, but now you have messed about with onboard graphics... I would try another video card in there!!xavier, i recommend becoming more educated in computer hardware before giving advice. as michaewlewis was saying, you DONT need a harddrive in order to run a bootable CD. and no, you cannot boot off of a game CD unless it was created to be a bootable disk.

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but now the computer won't boot from cd

what does it do? does it just bypass it?
I understand HOMER, {accepted} Quote from: homer on June 16, 2008, 06:53:21 PM
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but now the computer won't boot from cd

what does it do? does it just bypass it?
yes. When I try setting bios to only boot from cd it doesn't do anything either.

Quote from: Crafty on June 16, 2008, 06:29:00 PM
I would try another video card in there!!
I would, but as I said before, I don't have another PCI video card.Maybe you could boot from floppy with a set of drivers to then run the CD.  I USED to do that a long time ago.  Not much help, I know, but if you can't get the system to boot from CD, it's about your only option.That's kind of what I was thinking. But finding floppy disks that still work isn't an easy task anymore.
I think the pc is too old to boot from usb, but I'll check that out later. I won't be able to look at it again until maybe friday night.I don't think finding drivers will be difficult for someone at your level., but I did find THIS page.  I don't believe they charge for download -- I saw info requesting free registration.

I used to have a floppy with a set of Mitsumi drivers which seemed like they could run any brand that was on the market at that time.Bootdisk.com....

I normally use the WinME custom with CDROM support for this.


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