Stoka

Hi all, my first post here so be gentle!

Right i've been given an old E-Systems laptop which is riddled with viruses. I've tried Norton, AVG & Avast and none can remove or heal the viruses on there plus they've worked their way into the svchost.exe now.

I'm trying to format it so i've got my XP disc, selected the CD/DVD as the first boot option in BIOS and I still get no prompt to press any key to boot from disc. I've pressed either F8/F9/F11/F12 to get the boot option list and when I hit the CD drive it still insists on loading up the OS.

The disc works fine in other machines and I get the prompt straight away.

Any help ?

Thanks.

TriggerFinger

If the CD installer works in other machines, then may be you need to clean the lens of the drive or may be consider replacement.

Stoka

Thanks for the reply!

Would of been worth me mentioning that before the system got stuck in the log-on and auto log-out loop I tried a music CD in the drive and that worked fine.

TriggerFinger

You mean logon in Windows? If so, try booting from CD/DVD drive. Set boot sequence in BIOS setup. This is testing the CD/DVD drive outside of Windows. If CD/DVD drive cannot boot from ANY bootable CD or a 'tested to boot' CD then you have a problem with the drive itself.