Hey, so I’m trying to get this Windows XP machine to boot the OS, but I’m stuck. I actually managed to get it out of this before, by what I thought was spamming random F keys to try and get into the BIOS, but it doesn’t seem to be working this time. I think it’s something to do with Hibernate mode, but I don’t know for certain. I know for sure that the OS is there, I’ve gotten it to work before, but I can’t get it working anymore.
Look up the manufacturers shortcut for getting into the bios. May have been the delete key. Beyond that make sure the all the hardware is properly installed and all the cables are seated as well.
have you run a hardware test? if this is a machine that came with XP, then its due for some form of hardware failure which may be the root cause of your problem
No, this is an old install that’s been there since like 2002.
Yeah, XP supports the hardware. I believe it’s the only Windows OS that will even run.
No idea. It’s a Compaq Presario 700 CM2130.
Software doesn’t just randomly go bad, unless its a boot sector virus and they haven’t been a thing for a couple of decades at this point.
I think its more likely intermittently and now possibly permanently failed hardware, and your luck getting in before after spamming keys was co-incidence/placebo…
I ran two versions of the Windows installer. One, was a ghetto factory reset, and the other was an x86 XP Home Edition ISO. Both reported/detected that there was NOT a hard drive.
This is really weird though because as far as I’m aware, I have NOT touched any of the hardware in that section too much at all. I don’t know what’s going on here, or why, but I need to investigate further.
I think I’m going to try and swap pieces with the spare that I have and try to see if I can get some kind of better configuration working/going.