A friend of mine has a Dell pc & I can't get xp to boot

hhmmm try it in safe mode?

Can you elaborate on what is happening?

You may want to make sure that the hard drive is set to be the first device in the boot order. Then make sure that any other devices are disabled temporarily.

Make sure there is nothing in the CD drives, that is sometimes the case, but like the person before me said elaborate on what exactly you mean. How far does it boot up till and so forth.

Reason not to boot:

Your bios is not set to boot from hard drive

Your hard drive is finish

Your hard drive is corrupted (boot sector)

Your windows XP installation is damaged

Your wires to the hard drive are loose (check both)

Your power supply is not sending electricity to drive


If you can start your pc try to go into the bios (usually by pressing "delete or F2 or F10) once in there go to the menu where it shows your drive and see if the bios sees your drive if it does then you know you have electricity and that your wires are connected ok if not check the wires first then if still not seen change the electric one for another if you have any spare and check if still not seen if not then it is probably finished.

If your bios sees the drive but still cannot boot then your xp installation is damage.

Would help if you could write the message you get when trying to boot.

it's a pc thats your prob shoulda got a mac dude

could be you need to to format your hardrive n intsall xp over again but best to do clean intall

Computers do not boot for many more reasons then listed above,
others could be lose chips or memory, lose plugs, dust between connections, video card settings are wrong in windows (can still boot in bios), hardware conflicts (IRQ conflicts) and the list goes on and on:
Dealing with a problem computer is like fixing a car that won't start, you have to narrow and narrow the problem down as cheap as you can before you fix it. Being that I work on cars and sometimes computers I try to use the same approach. First of all, if it is just constantly rebooting you need to see if there is an error message coming up. If you cannot see it quickly hit pause before it restarts again, sometimes you can catch the message and write the system error down if there is one. This gives you a footing of where to start, your bios settings would be next, did something get changed in there on accident, who knows, message me if you need help.

im glad i have a mac i typically skip all those bs probs

if you have a boot from item in the list that has stopped working it will prevent boot (for example if a floppy went out and the floppy is in your boot sequence)

mine is doing that now

hitting f1 sends mine through the boot process

good luck

get a mac save that prob

No one here can help you without more information. My advise would be to take it in to a reputable computer shop

Sometimes. In my experiences, Macs fail too. However, when a PC fails, there's hundreds of tools out there to help you. With Mac, you are SOL. The proprietary nature is the greatest strenght and weakness of apple.

lol show how much you dont know bout macs lmao a noobish remark lol funny

I troubleshoot hardware & software issues with Macs & PCs day in and out. Macs are more difficult to work on.

Right, the government is paying me to go to college for cyber-security because I suck with computers. You might want to call cisco and take my CCNA too. And my A+. And you should call Microsoft and tell them not to let me sit for their exams this spring.

The biggest problem with Macs is the arrogant, elitist attitude that comes along with the owners. All computers fail. The hardware inside a Windows box and a Mac are no different. When a PC fails, it's really easy to figure out why. A mac is no such luck.

Yes, the software is far more stable but that is the proprietary nature. By limiting what can be put into the machine, you control a lot more variables.

i have np probs with my mac n i know how to work on mine, its ironic though that macs design pcs, i jave no arrogant attitude im just stating the pros of havin a mac ,i happen to have a few pc's only cuz the price was way cheaper.

wait until you have a hardware failure. That is when things get really crappy. Finding diagnostic utilities is a royal PITA for maccintosh. At least the intel ones are better than the old ones where a lot of stuff was board-integrated. I imagine the iMacs are still like that though. i only have experience on the pros.

for software stability, they can't be beat (though I'm having tremendous luck with windows 7 thus far, even on a crappy netbook) but as for hardware, it's still intel, nvidia, and all the same companies that build stuff for PCs.

yea w/e post dead

Make sure you do not have to have a specific boot disk for the dell, a lot of dells are picky with the disk they boot. In addition if you swap out parts, specifically in a lot of laptops, the system recognizes a change and may not take the new hardware that was changed such as a switched hard drive, or anything of that nature. There is ways around stuff like that, you must use a master disk as mentioned above, even if you are missing drivers, you can get them off the internet once you get into windows.