Recent content by awittyusername

Sorry if I didn't make it clear in the first post, but the system would not boot to any CD (XP or W7) or bootable USB drive with the HDD connected so I couldn't repair the MBR. The point is moot anyway, I flattened it last night and removed all partitions using the second PC. It then allowed...

Nah, it was virtually empty. No great shakes, just time consuming doing a fresh install. I can't format it from the PC it's in because it won't boot with the HDD connected, so I'm borrowing a friend's tonight and doing it on his and seeing where that gets me. I'll post results tomorrow for...

Well, if you have another hard drive to test with, plug it into the machine and see if the problems subside. Do you hear the drive spin up? Is it detected properly in the bios? Have you tried another power supply connector (off another chain of connectors if possible?) Unfortunately I don't...

That would be the normal course of action and I did try that, I've nothing on the drive worth keeping so I was happy to wipe it. Win7 is still on the drive, but I can't boot from CD to do a format and fresh install or repair. If I select to boot from CD with the HDD connected, the boot sequence...

Yeah I tried resetting the BIOS to default values, same result. Tried a fresh battery for the CMOS, same result. Tried jigging the settings in the BIOS, same result :( I'll try hitting F10 tonight to see if I can view the boot process but I don't remember seeing the option. It has "Esc -...

It's really old, but it was free and I thought it would be a good start to get back into the world of PCs - been out of it for a while now. Unfortunately I'm at work so I don't have the full specs right now but I'll attempt to remember what's what off the top of my head: Motherboard: MSI...

Good morning all! Sorry for the length of this post but I'd rather give all the information in one go to cut to the chase quicker and save you asking me questions that you would have otherwise skipped. Last night I decided I wanted a copy of trusty old XP installing so I could dual boot...