I have an Advent T9208. It has always worked well but today when my daughter started it up it made some grinding noises and will not boot up. It sounds serious. Is there a way to get it to boot up? I have a recovery disk but although it is runnning nothing seems to be happening. The system is Windows XP.

SOURCE: I tried to image copy

Where was the destination for your ghost image? was it to another partition or folder on your harddrive, a seperate harddrive or DVD disks?

SOURCE: Only getting EMachines/Windows XP Logo when boot up T3882

you have not set the cdrom as first boot device in the bios (press F2 or Del on boot up to get in bios), choose cd as first boot device, save settings and restart the pc with your cd in the drive and then when prompted press enter

SOURCE: Ntldr compressed

Need more info

SOURCE: I need a system recovery disk for my Gateway Desktop

If the computer originally came with a backup software disk, you can try contacting gateway for a replacement. If the backup software was instead on a dedicated partition of the original drive you will need an XP home system disk, in which case you can probably get a better deal off the shelf at a retailer. Be sure you get the full version and not an upgrade, as you don't have any windows system currently installed for an upgrade to detect. If your Gateway has a Windows XP COA affixed and you can borrow a full XP Home installation disk from a friend you can install from that disk inputting your number from your COA when prompted. (don't use your friends COA) Microsoft will recognize this as a genuine restored installation so long as you have not changed any other major hardware in the system, and you input the same information for activation as you did originally. And you can get the service packs and other updates just as you always have.

Or: you could become a Linux user for free. For the Linux newbie I would have to recommend the Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS for their user-friendliness. Again that's FREE! if you try it and don't like it you're out exactly $0.00! My systems have been Linux exclusively for about 7 years, and am kinda partial to the Mandriva distributions, though I tried PCLinuxOS a while back and have had that on this system ever since, though it has it's quirks. But don't all systems?


If you find my suggestions to be helpful, please share with us some details so that others may benefit from knowing the whole story. Thank you!

SOURCE: The system won't recognize the hard drive to boot up. Is there a boot disk so I don't have to do a system recovery?

I think the hard drive has failed. Sorry