installation reboots my pc dead

Brand new Philips X51 Notebook.
Partition C is XP Home Partition D is XP Pro and Partition E is a new one for Vista.
Installation goes OK until it says it needs to restart... all i get is a flashing cursor and a completely dead PC - can't boot into either XPs.
I tried using XP recovery console to rebuild the bootcfg but to no avail.
Help!

can you try running fdisk /mbr from the recovery console?
"Robert Lightbody" wrote:

Brand new Philips X51 Notebook.
Partition C is XP Home Partition D is XP Pro and Partition E is a new one for Vista.
Installation goes OK until it says it needs to restart... all i get is a flashing cursor and a completely dead PC - can't boot into either XPs.
I tried using XP recovery console to rebuild the bootcfg but to no avail.
Help!

The correct command is "fixmbr".
Since he already stated that he's tried using the recovery console to "rebuild the bootcfg" I'm guessing he's already tried that.
fdisk /mbr is for fat16/32 drives and most people that are running XP don't typically use the fat file system(s) for thier fixed disks.
Robert, do you have a WinPE or BartPE disk? Can you access your disks from there if you do have one? If not, the partitions may be un-recoverable.
Mic
"Kip" wrote:

can you try running fdisk /mbr from the recovery console?
"Robert Lightbody" wrote:
Brand new Philips X51 Notebook.
Partition C is XP Home Partition D is XP Pro and Partition E is a new one for Vista.
Installation goes OK until it says it needs to restart... all i get is a flashing cursor and a completely dead PC - can't boot into either XPs.
I tried using XP recovery console to rebuild the bootcfg but to no avail.
Help!

fdisk /mbr works for ntfs drives, too. I've used it.
"Mickey" wrote:

The correct command is "fixmbr".
Since he already stated that he's tried using the recovery console to "rebuild the bootcfg" I'm guessing he's already tried that.
fdisk /mbr is for fat16/32 drives and most people that are running XP don't typically use the fat file system(s) for thier fixed disks.
Robert, do you have a WinPE or BartPE disk? Can you access your disks from there if you do have one? If not, the partitions may be un-recoverable.
Mic
"Kip" wrote:
can you try running fdisk /mbr from the recovery console?
"Robert Lightbody" wrote:
Brand new Philips X51 Notebook.
Partition C is XP Home Partition D is XP Pro and Partition E is a new one for Vista.
Installation goes OK until it says it needs to restart... all i get is a flashing cursor and a completely dead PC - can't boot into either XPs.
I tried using XP recovery console to rebuild the bootcfg but to no avail.
Help!

"Kip" wrote:

fdisk /mbr works for ntfs drives, too. I've used it.

Neat trick, all I get when I type "fdisk" or "fdisk /mbr" at a recovery console is, "The command is not recognized Type HELP for a list of supported commands."
I have several DOS and Win 9x floppy disks, but no floppy drive installed. So I'm not going to try one of those on an NTFS formatted drive.
Not that I think it would work anyway, since fdisk (or DOS, for that matter) doesn't recognize NTFS partitions.
I've never worked on a Windows XP that was formatted with FAT 32, so I can't even say if fdisk is available when the drive is FAT32, but I know for sure it's not available for NTFS.

Hello again.
Thanks for your replies guys, very helpful.
I think if I'd done fixmbr it would have fixed it, i'll know that for next time - thanks.
In a mild panic at 3am I fixed it by reinstalling XP Pro which sorted out the MBRs for me.
I've since installed Vista on my elderly desktop (XP1800+) with no problems at all...
Cheers,
- Rob
"Robert Lightbody" wrote:

Brand new Philips X51 Notebook.
Partition C is XP Home Partition D is XP Pro and Partition E is a new one for Vista.
Installation goes OK until it says it needs to restart... all i get is a flashing cursor and a completely dead PC - can't boot into either XPs.
I tried using XP recovery console to rebuild the bootcfg but to no avail.
Help!

Hello again.
Thanks for your replies guys, very helpful.
I think if I'd done fixmbr it would have fixed it, i'll know that for next time - thanks.
In a mild panic at 3am I fixed it by reinstalling XP Pro which sorted out the MBRs for me.
I've since installed Vista on my elderly desktop (XP1800+) with no problems at all...
Cheers,
- Rob
"Robert Lightbody" wrote:

Brand new Philips X51 Notebook.
Partition C is XP Home Partition D is XP Pro and Partition E is a new one for Vista.
Installation goes OK until it says it needs to restart... all i get is a flashing cursor and a completely dead PC - can't boot into either XPs.
I tried using XP recovery console to rebuild the bootcfg but to no avail.
Help!