winIuzer

Seeing that the boot sequence ends with "disk boot failure insert system disk", that's unlikely. It could be that the hard drive is intermittently failing and that repeated power cycling eventually allows it to boot. @clairehh: If you could provide us with as much information about your computer as possible, that would really help us out. If you have a recovery disk, then it sounds like you have a branded computer, something like a Dell, HP or Gateway? Can you find a model number on your computer as well? That thing about the HD requiring several power cycles sounds like the power jack that the IDE/SATA power cable plugs into is going bad, check the power cable (look for bite marks and cracks/rips in the cable) and both the connector in the mainboard and in the HD itself (look for bent, loose, broken or missing pins).

Hi, if I could have a set to setp how to put adplus in the run registry would be awesome. Thank you To do that you need to boot into safe mode with command prompt which will give you a terminal window without loading explorer. From that terminal window you can launch regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and add the entry there. To make it go after Default and before everything else you need to put a number "0" as the first character in the name of the key (it will say "0adplus"). If your windows is unbootable or won't even get to a terminal window, you can try with a Linux LiveCD(USB) and use a tool (can't remember it's name ATM) to modify the windows registry. Or a Windows LiveCD if you got the licence to use WinPE stuff.

First, try using the latest svn release of Wine. Also ensure that you didn't remove the "manual installation and upgrade" component (if using a nLite'd install CD).

Put adplus in the "run" registry entry and ensure that it is above any other program that is on that list (the "Default" key can be above it). That way it runs before everything else and catches the explorer crash. You can alternativelly use the 50/50 method on your startup items to see which one might be causing the crashes.

Have you tried installing windows server 2003 in your servers. Since your XP clients are the ones having problems, maybe using a XP based OS for your server will rule out incompatibilities coming from mixing diferent windows versions.

Does it support ICH8-M?

Sounds like your son maybe switched the BIOS boot order placing the LAN (PXE) boot option above the HD one causing the computer to try to netboot before scanning it's internal HD.