Sudden and complete computer failure

PatrickGSR94

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I'm running my home PC with two partitions on the primary HDD, dual booting XP and Win8. It normally stays on XP.

So tonight the PC started acting a little weird. I tried starting up my RDP links to office computers, and none of them worked. I did a restart, but before it would actually shut down it kept saying the RDP process had to close, 5 different times.

After restarting it was very slow coming back up in XP. I finally got programs working, including RDP. I logged onto my office computer and did what I needed to do, then closed the RDP connection. I noticed some other programs were VERY VERY slow to come up.

So I thought I'd try booting into Windows 8. After choosing the Windows 8 options from the boot menu, it immediately said "Preparing repair options" or something like that, below the Windows logo and spinning dots. Then the only options it gave me were to open repair options, or turn off the computer. I tried one of the options (can't remember which ones now), but it was something that prompted a reboot. After rebooting, the dreaded "No Bootable Device" message appeared. I did check in BIOS and all my hard drive device names did show up.

I can't seem to find the Windows 8 DVD that I made, but I tried putting in the WinXP CD. Tried a repair XP installation on the C: drive. It copied all the files, but after that it still said No Bootable Device.

Next I tried Recovery Console from the XP CD. Tried running CHKDSK, it said some error was found but gave me no more info. I tried running FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. Both said they ran successfully. Restarted again, and after a VERRRY long wait before the BIOS splash screen (just a black screen with cursor), it finally came up once again with No Bootable Device.

What the heck could have happened? I have a HDD enclosure at work that has a power supply and USB cable, so I'll probably stick the HDD in there and hook it up to my laptop just to see if it will show the files on it. Anything else I should look at in the meantime?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows XP
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home built
I was planning on reformatting the XP partition anyway due to some lingering issues from previous malware (Google search results redirecting to other pages), but I need to check the HDD for certain files if possible. Pretty much all of my data is stored on a separate physical HDD, though, so shouldn't be a big deal there.

Just seems odd that the XP recovery console would display all partitions, including the XP and Windows 8 partitions, yet still says No Bootable Device.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows XP
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home built
Okay I think I got it fixed up. I'm thinking what happened is something having to do with boot files or data in the MBR got screwed up, probably because of the dual boot XP/8 situation, and whatever it was I did in the Windows 8 Troubleshooting screen. For some reason it made the BIOS think there was no boot device available.

So I unplugged all the other HDD's, booted up the XP CD and went to Repair Console. From there I used the DISKPART command to completely remove the partition with Windows 8 on it. Then I ran FIXMBR and FIXBOOT just in case, and then ran CHKDSK /R, which found and repaired one problem.

After that XP booted up and went back through the whole XP setup process again, had to enter product key again, etc. etc. But then after all that it appears everything is back to normal. My user profile, desktop, everything is the same as it was before. Only issue I'm getting is a DLL error on startup from the Intel Wireless Monitor - hopefully an update will fix that.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows XP
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home built
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