Could it be a bad hard drive?? :cry:

What operating system are you using? This could be the cause of a bad hard drive. Perhaps even a bad BIOS chip on the motherboard? What happens when you turn on your computer again? Do you get any error messages? Did this always occur or just start recently? Was there any recent surge of electricity through your computer? (e.g. from a lightning storm or a sudden black-out)

It's actually my friends computer. It has always done this since he bought it. He's running XP. He took it back to the manufacturer (it's still under warrantee) and they said it wasnt the hard drive but they say it's not the anything in the computer. (Something doesnt sound right!) I asked him to write down what error if any he gets on reboot and let me know.

Who is the MFR of the computer? Let us know so that we all don't go out and buy that brand... if all the MRF can say is that it is not anything IN the computer...Then what OUTSIDE of the computer could cause this to happen?

OK, sorry it took so long. What is actually happening is after they shut the computer off ,when they turn it back on it will only boot to a c: prompt Might they need to change the boot.ini?

Check the boot.ini file. If the computer has both Windows XP as well as DOS installed, a bootloader might be saying to run DOS instead. See, WinXP doesn't come with a standalone version of DOS (giving you a C: prompt). Check the boot.ini file.

Perhaps there is a cd-rom or floppy, etc in a removable drive that is being loaded before Windows is. Go into the BIOS and check the boot order. If there are more than one hard drive/partitions installed, make sure to first check the hdd with WinXP installed to it.

That's what I was thinking. I'm glad you reaffirmed my thoughts. It helps me to learn while doing this and build some confidence. I appreciate the help. I will have them try this. I dont have access to the system at this time. I will post my reply probably tomorrow or the next day. Thanks again for the help so far.

I do have a question. I'm not real familiar with editing the boot.ini. What should it look like in order to boot to XP? :oops:

For only one operating system, WindowsXP Professional on the primary partition of the master hdd, boot.ini should look something like this: