Ben_JH

My first course of action would be to do a virus scan from boot (i.e. before windows loads) If you have access to the internet, a CD burner and a USB stick then I would recommend you download F-Secures Emergency Virus scanner (its free!) and burn that to a CD. You need the USB stick for the updated virus definitions. If you dont have that I think it will just try and connect you to the internet and download it itself, but you might have to hook it upto your router with an ethernet cable if your doing it wirelessly at the moment. There are other emergency virus scanners out there that will do the trick, it's just I personally favor F-secure. If that doesn't work you may have to resort to your recovery disks - just make sure you back up your data. For the record you should be able to access your hidden partition (if you even have one) by pressing F10, F8, Del etc - this varies with manufacurers. Let me know how it pans out - if you still have problems after trying all of this you can narrow it down to a hardware issue.

Any new software/hardware installed recently? Are you able to perform a virus scan either in safe mode or from boot? (preferably the latter) Have you tried running system restore whilst booted in safe mode? Failing all three of those, your easiest option might be to repair your Operating System either from an installation CD or from the hidden partion of your HD (if applicable). It might be wise to back up your important files whilst in safe mode in any case.

This is what I have displayed in my BIOS menu: My HD Boot Priority in BIOS is showing up as: 1. Ch2 S. : Western Digital (Windows 7) 2. Ch3 M. : Western Digital (Data) 3. Ch2 M : Seagate (XP) This is what it shows in Advanced CMOS features: IDE Channel 0 Master: [None] (just noticed this - my second DVD drive is no longer showing up!) IDE Channel 0 Slave: [DVD RW] IDE Channel 2 Master: [seagate] IDE Channel 2 Slave: [Western Digital] (Windows 7) IDE Channel 3 Master: [Western Digital] (Data) IDE Channel 3 Slave: [None] Just a note, upon removing the Data HD Windows 7 will boot. On removing the XP HD Windows 7 still will not boot. I'm guessing the first time I removed the Data HD it was just a fluke. I have the Ultimate Boot CD already but what should I be using? Your gonna have to excuse me with this, I've never had to get into boot issues before so I'm a bit thick on this subject!

1) Have you made any hard ware changes recently? 2) Are you able to enter your BIOS setup? (Try hitting Del, F10, F2 repeatedly on power up) 3) Do you have your Windows Vista Installation disk or has your PC been shipped with it already installed and no recovery disk? If you have access to the intenet and have a blank CD-R and a usb pen drive you might want to consider downloading F-Secure's Emergency CD and burn it to the disk. You will also need to have a USB drive handy for the virus definition updates, or at least have an internet connection on the machine to be tested. Check out their website for full instructions. It is possible you have a virus so we should rule that out first before addressing hardware issues.

To be fair it could still be your PSU (power supply), if whats happening to you happened to me this is the first place I would be checking. If your motherboard and components aren't getting enough power then it would result in a power-down. This may only happen when all of its components are under full load (for example, when your running demanding progams such as playing games). Whats is your PSU rated at (in Watts)? Give me the full list of all your hardware and their make & model and I can calculate how much power your system needs.

So just to double check, I would need to run a boot manager from the CD? And do what exactly? Sorry its just this is the first time I've come across something like this!

Hi lads & lasses, first time posting =] I've got a string of problems at the moment spread across a few different operating systems, however I have a suspicion they could all be related to each other so it's very hard to put this in a definitive topic area. First of all let me list my set up: Desktop: Hard Drive 1 - SATA Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB (Windows 7 64-bit) Hard Drive 2 - SATA Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB (Data, Music, Videos etc) Hard Drive 3 - SATA Seagate ST312006AS 120GB (Windows XP Pro 32-bit) Laptop: Hard Drive 4 - SATA Toshiba HDD2D60 120GB (Windows Vista Premium 32-bit) The first 3 hard drives have been working fine in my custom built PC since August 09. First of all I started out with the Seagate HD with Windows XP. I got a Western Digital HD to store all my non-OS data on. In October I purchased Windows 7 64-bit and had this installed on another Western Digital HD. All 3 HD's are connected to my motherboard and have been working absolutely perfectly until about two weeks ago. What happened? Well not content with the 120GB Seagate (as it's starting to get on a bit) I decided to clone it to yet another Western Digital HD using Mirray's HD Clone program since my XP installation disk was shattered when I moved out of my parents house. As it happens, now neither XP HD will boot due to "missing NTDLR" - however if I use a boot disk to get windows up and running it works fine. I suspect a corrupted MBR but naturally I'm unable to use the Windows recovery console since I no longer have the flaming disk. What does this have to do with Windows 7 you say? Well heres an interesting issue I ran into whilst trying to run my laptop hard drive to transfer some files. I disconnected the XP based hard drive and plugged the Toshiba in. Try to boot Windows 7 and *BAM* blue screen of death on loading and the PC restarts. Very odd. Put the XP hard drive back in - no problem, Windows 7 starts fine. I go on and test this a little further - I keep the Windows 7 HD in and the XP HD in, but remove the Data HD. Windows 7 starts loading - blue screen of death again. Same again when I remove the XP HD (with Data HD connected or not). Just what the hell is going on here!? I've been using PC's for years and have never heard of anything like this been made possible - surely the HD I installed Windows 7 is independant of the other drives? Anyway, if anyone can explain whats happening and give me a way to resolve this I would be greatly appriciative. Also, I'm also willing to learn so don't skimp out on details! =P Oh, and if anyone can point me in the right direction with fixing my MBR for XP that would be grand. I have a friend with an XP installation disk coming down in a few weeks but I'd rather not wait that long!