How to restore Windows ME from HD

[emil_lam]

Hi,

I have one PC w/ below major H/W components:

1. Magic pro motherboard

2. Althon 1700+ CPU

3. 256 DDR RAM

In past few weeks, my PC didn't boot up smoothly. Boot up halted at various stages, no matter right after BIOS message showed up on screen, RAM check, IDE hardware detection, windows ME logo show up, even after windows successfully started up.

Sometimes, PC auto restarted, sometimes it just hanged up there. I needed to press the reset button to force PC reboot.

What's worst, due to repeated failed boots using HD-A alone, ME had complained that it couldn't process registry and advised using scanreg /fix to fix problem.

To fix the problem, I carried out below steps:

1. Installed Windows ME in a spare blank disk, called it HD-B.

2. Connected HD-B to IDE bus master, the original HD (called it HD-A) to IDE bus slave.

3. Powered up PC, copied data from HD-A to HD-B.

4. Powered off PC, replaced PSU. Disconnected HD-B from IDE bus.

5. Powered up PC again but booted it with ME boot floppy.

6. Ran scanreg /fix as suggested previously by ME

7. Rebooted PC using HD-A.

After 7., ME started up but PC rebooted within 10 seconds. The PC kept on reboot & reboot again automatically with each reboot triggered within 10 seconds every time ME seemed started up successfully.

I suspected something wrong with ME configured in HD-A, so I did below things.

9. I booted up PC using ME startup floppy (with HD-A connected to IDE bus only). After successful boot I ran below .bat file located at c:\

:LOOP

DIR /W

GOTO LOOP

Commands in .bat file kept on executing for over 30 minutes, no auto-reboot triggered.

10. I reconnected HD-B to IDE bus master & HD-A to bus slave. I booted up PC using ME installed in HD-B. After successful boot I played a .avi file repeatedly with Window Media Play for over 30 minutes. Again no auto-reboot triggered.

I would like to ask what should I do to re-enable HD-A boot up stably on it's own without re-installing the OS ?

[Scarecrow Man]

Try booting from the ME boot disk, and type

fdisk /mbr

Can you boot into safe mode?