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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

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