Morning - so what do I need to do. Please make it simple as I only use the thing - I don't usually try to fix it.
Cliff

Hi Cliff,
I am not sure what is going on but your boot.ini file is good.
First up, (turn off your computer at the power point) open your box and look on the main board ( the largest circuit board in your box) and find a battery that is about 1/2 inch round and flat. You can get your fingernail under it and click it out. Leave it out for 5 mins and then replace. Start your computer again and see what happens.
Do you have an emergency start up disk?

Well I don't think anything is wrong with
the boot.ini file of this user.

I agree with Oly Computers, there is something wrong with the settings in BIOS.

Of course BIOS does not "go" to the boot menu... ntldr loads and parses it. And from there everything is fine.
Cliff, enter BIOS Setup [instruction is on the first POST screen [Pause key will hold the screen for you, Enter to continue]. Set your boot order to have your System drive [the one with ntldr, boot.ini etc] at the top. It could be that you have something like a network boot device at the top, having a CD/dvd combo there would not be a problem if no boot disk was in it]. By the way, does C:\ntdetect.com exist?
As for the bluescreen issue... just guessing here, but it could be that Setup loaded the wrong HAL for your motherboard during installation. Tell us the make, model of your mb, plus the HAL original name:
Go system32, rclick hal.dll, properties, version tab and select Original Name; post it here.

A couple of clarifications:

First POST screen is the first (usually black and white, text only) screen that is shown when your computer turns on.

Instructions for getting into Setup are "Press F1 to enter BIOS" or "Press F2 to setup" or "Press F10 for Setup" or something similar.

Once you have gotten into the setup menu, you need to look for the boot order, boot priorities, something along those lines - and choose the Hard drive that has your Operating system as the highest priority.

Once you have done this, you should dave the settings and exit. Your computer wilkl restart, and it should solve the problem.

However - if it does not, then you will need to reef out your Operating system install CD / DVD and cause your computer to boot to this disc; when it gets through to the first selection menu, choose Repair install using the recovery console.

This will take you to a text-only prompt that will ask you which OS you want to repair; follow the prompts, and then when you get through to the C:\ prompt, run the FIXMBR command on your OS drive. This should solve your problem if the first steps do not.

Please let me know how you go.

Below is what I have at start up. It always stops at F4. I want it to go to windows xp. Can anyone help?


[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
C:\ = "Microsoft Windows"