Boot message

[BoredCollie]

I was fiddling around with commecting and disconnecting C-drives (one of which has Ubuntu on it, the other Win 10), as I was connecting a new HDD to see whether it was defective, and then something happened: when I tried to boot, I got a message saying Windows is missing a system file and couldn’t boot. It made a reference to Win XP, which is evidently ancient - I haven’t used XP for a very long time - so I don’t know what my PC is thinking. It’s obviously searching for something it’s not finding.

I managed to boot using my installation CD and then scanned for errors, and none showed up. Now, when I boot, I go through this same irritating process (I have to press F12) but I have found I can I ask it to boot through my internal SATA drive and the only thing that is different from my former usage is that I have to do a bit of clicking before it shows my login/password box.

Is there any way I can get it to boot smoothly, as before?

With thanks in advance.

[Bruce]

how many drives are connected?
any external drives?

have you put the PC back to the same state it was when it was booting OK?
that is, the same boot drive, no others drives, cables haven’t been changed, connected to same SATA port, no BIOS boot order changes?

[Bruce]

@BoredCollie - where we at?

[Bruce]

closing - no activity - PM any staff member if you would like this re-opened.