I have a question about Top 
reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000:



I HAVE A LAPTOP PENTIUM 4 HP PAVILION 1000 SERIOUS WITH WINDOWS XP.  SYSTEM WAS WORKING 
FINE, THEN SUDDENLY SCREEN WENT BLACK, DID NOTHING FOR LONGEST TIME,SO I SHUT DOWN 
THE SYSTEM.  I LET IT SIT FOR A WHILE, AND WHEN TRYING TO GET BACK ON IT SAYS EXACTLY 
THIS: "1600 Mhz Pentium 4 CPU
           External Cache: 512K installe
           Hard disk boot sector invalid
           Press "H" to retry Hard Disk, any other keyfor
           Next  Device"
If I press "H" the same message appears, if any other key is pressed it then takes 
me to a screen giving me options of "H" Hard disk   "R" cd-rom/dvd    "A" Diskette 
A   or "L" Internal Lan,  NONE of which work.  What have I done??!!!  What do I need 
to do!!??   I'm stumped, and frustrated, please help!!   Thanks to anyone that can 
possibly get me out of this mess.  I haven't a clue what the problem is.

Tip: Run a free scan for common Windows errors ad

re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' Wednesday, June 19, 2002 at 12:46 am Posted by AA (1 messages posted) The message says it all. It looks like your hard drive is having problems finding an operating system to load. Ie: hardware problem. I'd log a call with HP, as I assume this one is covered under warranty. On Tuesday, June 18, 2002 at 9:14 pm, tj wrote: >I have a question about Top >reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000: > > >I HAVE A LAPTOP PENTIUM 4 HP PAVILION 1000 SERIOUS WITH WINDOWS XP. SYSTEM WAS WORKING >FINE, THEN SUDDENLY SCREEN WENT BLACK, DID NOTHING FOR LONGEST TIME,SO I SHUT DOWN >THE SYSTEM. I LET IT SIT FOR A WHILE, AND WHEN TRYING TO GET BACK ON IT SAYS EXACTLY >THIS: "1600 Mhz Pentium 4 CPU > External Cache: 512K installe > Hard disk boot sector invalid > Press "H" to retry Hard Disk, any other keyfor > Next Device" >If I press "H" the same message appears, if any other key is pressed it then takes >me to a screen giving me options of "H" Hard disk "R" cd-rom/dvd "A" Diskette >A or "L" Internal Lan, NONE of which work. What have I done??!!! What do I need >to do!!?? I'm stumped, and frustrated, please help!! Thanks to anyone that can >possibly get me out of this mess. I haven't a clue what the problem is. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' Wednesday, June 19, 2002 at 4:51 am Posted by Bob B (2307 messages posted) Sounds like the hard drive may have bit the big one... On Tuesday, June 18, 2002 at 9:14 pm, tj wrote: >I have a question about Top >reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000: > > >I HAVE A LAPTOP PENTIUM 4 HP PAVILION 1000 SERIOUS WITH WINDOWS XP. SYSTEM WAS WORKING >FINE, THEN SUDDENLY SCREEN WENT BLACK, DID NOTHING FOR LONGEST TIME,SO I SHUT DOWN >THE SYSTEM. I LET IT SIT FOR A WHILE, AND WHEN TRYING TO GET BACK ON IT SAYS EXACTLY >THIS: "1600 Mhz Pentium 4 CPU > External Cache: 512K installe > Hard disk boot sector invalid > Press "H" to retry Hard Disk, any other keyfor > Next Device" >If I press "H" the same message appears, if any other key is pressed it then takes >me to a screen giving me options of "H" Hard disk "R" cd-rom/dvd "A" Diskette >A or "L" Internal Lan, NONE of which work. What have I done??!!! What do I need >to do!!?? I'm stumped, and frustrated, please help!! Thanks to anyone that can >possibly get me out of this mess. I haven't a clue what the problem is. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 3:45 am Posted by Tiffany (1 messages posted) lol.. HP is notorious for screwing harddrives up.. I think they have a power surge problem. Every time you install a harddrive in HP, it fails earlier than it should. MUCH earlier. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 10:09 pm Posted by david brick (2 messages posted) I think that basically your MBR (master boot record) is screwed up. I had a tri boot PC ( XP Pro, 2000 Server, SuSE Linux) and after deleting Win 2k Server partition on the laptop to save space by using Partition Magic this error appeared. Not wanting to lose all the information on the laptop on the XP partition... I did the following... 1)I tried to reinstall XP with the product CD by putting it in the CD drive restarting the computer and waiting for it to load up with different options. I think Install is the choice you want to select even though you are just reinstallilng... you don't want the recovery console option (yet).. You want to install XP with the option of leaving the existing file system in place (in other words you don't delete the entire Windows partition but probably just overwrite the existing Win files with new ones. This will rewrite your Windows files (by default I believe that they are in C:/Windows unless you did an upgrade from 2000 where I think that they installed under C:/WINNT by default). Take the CD out as it should have copied the files needed to install and restart. When I restarted the laptop it still didn't begin installing the operating system. If it doesn't then you need step 2 shown next... (2) Put the product CD back in the tray and restart and this time pick the Recovery Console option. Recovery Console is the closest that you get to the old DOS diskette for utilities. If you do a HELP /? then you see the commands. FDISK is now DISKPART and FDISK /MBR is now FIXMBR. It will ask you which Windows partition you want to do the recovery console on. So you should see a list of installed Windows installations (you will probably pick the first one since by default Windows will install to the C: drive first. You may be asked for an the password for the Adminstrator user account. Next select the partition and you enter the recovery console. Type DISKPART at the command line and you may see something like I did which had an unsed partition first of about 8MB then another small partition listed perhaps using the FAT, FAT32 or NTFS file system, then your large Windows installation partition. Now you know your partition layout! Next type FIXBOOT at the command line and then type FIXMBR. Restart the computer with the product CD removed and hopefully it should begin installing. I deleted all partitions after my WinXP partition while in the DISKPART area but this shouldn't be necessary as the main reason why the error originally occurred is because the MBR was whacked which shows among other things I believe where on the hard disk to start to look for the boot program so that you can begin the loader. If you use Linux then you may need to reinstall GRUB or Lilo loader since reinstalling Windows this way will overwrite the MBR for the Linux load. *** Note that before doing step 1 you may want to just try step 2. This is because if you have installed a service pack and updates... then I believe that you will need to install them again after reinstalling but I just wanted a fresh install of Win XP so I did step 1 as well. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 11:29 pm Posted by david brick (2 messages posted) Forgot to mention... If you do reinstall the operating system, please read this... as you will probably find that your old accounts are now gone and replaced by the single Administrator account. What to do? First when you are reinstalling then you may be asked what to name the computer. I think that the name of the computer will be randomly generated each time so you can pick a new name like 'WINXPCOMP' rather than using the random name generated by Windows. Each user account (including the default administrator) will be created with that name. For example there may be an 'Administrator.WINXPCOMP' account and if your name is Fred and you create an account after reinstall then you may find a 'Fred.WINXPCOMP' account created. All of these accounts are located in your Windows partition. If your Windows is on the C: drive then look under C:\Documents and Settings and you will probably find the old accounts there from the previous installation. All of your old programs are still there but the links and personal items that you had before are not associated with an account on the new installation. Log in under the Administrator account on your new installation and under Start button select Control Panel and User Accounts. Select Create A New Account and create a new name. It is easier if you pick a new name that you didn't have under the previous installation! Log out and Log back in or restart the computer and go in the Administrator account again. Next navigate to the C:\Documents and Settings folder and you hopefully should see a folder with a name of an account from a previous installation. For example if you used to use an account called Freddy then you may see a folder called Freddy or Freddy.(then the old name of the computer as mentioned above). You should also see a folder in C:\Documents and Settings with the new account you made. Let's say that is called Fredster. So you navigate into the folder of the old account Freddy and into the folders and copy the contents into the new accounts. For example you can navigate into the old Freddy folder Cookies and under the file menu at the top do a Edit then Select All to select all the items in the folder and then Copy,,, then go back to the Fredster account and the same folder Cookies and enter that folder and then do a Edit then Paste. You are just copying the contents of the Cookies folder in the Freddy account to the new Cookies folder in the Fredster account. You do this for all the folders including the Documents, Favorites, Desktop, Start Menu, Windows, etc... between the two accounts. If you get an error by copying the entire folder say Cookies to Cookies then try going into the folder and doing the Edit Select All and Copy then Edit Paste functions between accounts and see where you error out to not include that file in the selection to copy over. This will make most everything the same between the old account to the new one with some exceptions like visual display settings. Also Windows uses some security information based on each account which may mean some security authentication or authorization I'm guessin' that may not pass but most will transfer between accounts. There are a few system files you may want to transfer between the accounts and to see them go to Windows My Computer and on the top menu choose Tools then Folder Options then View then Show Hidden Files and Folders. [Reply or follow-up to this message] Solution found !!! Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 12:54 am Posted by Zsombor Zsuffa (1 messages posted) I had the same problem and I found the solution, a very simple one. The partition I expected to boot was not active. To set it active you can use FDISK, and you have a menu there Set active partition. Good luck, Zsombor On Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 10:09 pm, david brick wrote: >I think that basically your MBR (master boot record) is screwed up. I had a tri >boot PC ( XP Pro, 2000 Server, SuSE Linux) and after deleting Win 2k Server partition >on the laptop to save space by using Partition Magic this error appeared. Not wanting >to lose all the information on the laptop on the XP partition... > >I did the following... > >1)I tried to reinstall XP with the product CD by putting it in the CD drive restarting >the computer and waiting for it to load up with different options. I think Install >is the choice you want to select even though you are just reinstallilng... you don't >want the recovery console option (yet).. You want to install XP with the option of >leaving the existing file system in place (in other words you don't delete the entire >Windows partition but probably just overwrite the existing Win files with new ones. > This will rewrite your Windows files (by default I believe that they are in C:/Windows >unless you did an upgrade from 2000 where I think that they installed under C:/WINNT >by default). Take the CD out as it should have copied the files needed to install >and restart. When I restarted the laptop it still didn't begin installing the operating >system. If it doesn't then you need step 2 shown next... > >(2) Put the product CD back in the tray and restart and this time pick the Recovery >Console option. Recovery Console is the closest that you get to the old DOS diskette >for utilities. If you do a HELP /? then you see the commands. FDISK is now DISKPART > and FDISK /MBR is now FIXMBR. It will ask you which Windows partition you want >to do the recovery console on. So you should see a list of installed Windows installations >(you will probably pick the first one since by default Windows will install to the >C: drive first. You may be asked for an the password for the Adminstrator user account. >Next select the partition and you enter the recovery console. Type DISKPART at the >command line and you may see something like I did which had an unsed partition first >of about 8MB then another small partition listed perhaps using the FAT, FAT32 or >NTFS file system, then your large Windows installation partition. Now you know your >partition layout! Next type FIXBOOT at the command line and then type FIXMBR. Restart >the computer with the product CD removed and hopefully it should begin installing. > I deleted all partitions after my WinXP partition while in the DISKPART area but >this shouldn't be necessary as the main reason why the error originally occurred >is because the MBR was whacked which shows among other things I believe where on >the hard disk to start to look for the boot program so that you can begin the loader. > If you use Linux then you may need to reinstall GRUB or Lilo loader since reinstalling >Windows this way will overwrite the MBR for the Linux load. > >*** Note that before doing step 1 you may want to just try step 2. This is because >if you have installed a service pack and updates... then I believe that you will >need to install them again after reinstalling but I just wanted a fresh install of >Win XP so I did step 1 as well. 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