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I have a HP Media Center PC with a Pentium D processor and it came with the Windows XP Professional operating system when I bought it new 6 yrs ago. It had the operating system already loaded therefore no disks came with it. The manual gave directions for making restore disks, which I did.
My question is that every now and then, when I turn it on, the screen remains black with just the white cursor blinking in the upper left corner. Is there a way to create a boot flash drive from either the on board XP software or the restore disks? I have checked the BIOS and it will allow booting from a USB drive. Thanks for any answers, Bob

Take a look at this ,,it may help you https://freewarebb.com/files/file/6931-unetbootin/
I'm sure Jim will come along an interject on this. This is really not my forte,sorry,but maybe the link can help.

Hey Bob - As far as I know there is no way to create bootable media from an installed OS or from recovery discs.

Not sure what you are wanting to achieve Bob, are you looking for a way to overcome the occasional boot issue you mentioned? The intermittent nature of the problem makes it very difficult to diagnose but also suggests it would most likely be hardware related - a loose cable, something breaking down under heat or load, something not quite connecting 100% all the time. Could be the hard drive is on the way out, maybe a RAM issue, maybe faulty connection on the motherboard - like a dry joint.

First thing I would be doing is running some sort of hard drive diagnostic software. Free ones include:
https://freewarebb.com/topic/60191-check-hard-drive-health-and-performance-with-hd-tune/
https://freewarebb.com/files/file/4012-crystaldiskinfo/ (portable)

Cheers...Jim

Thanks Jim, I didn't think what Bob wanted was possible,,but I also didn't want to advise one way or the other, just in case I misunderstood the question.I told Bob you would take care of the matter, and as usual,,,you didn't disappoint.
Thanks again,,buddy,,,you're the best.

Bob, I've never really tried this myself, but normally it's a case of copying the i386 folder onto a bootable USB stick, in the case of the recovery CD I don't know what the setup is like so I can't really comment ... I did, however, note the following article which may be of some use to you - let us know if it pans out OK
http://www.instantfundas.com/2009/09/how-to-create-bootable-usb-drive-with.html

As far as the issue regarding the screen staying blank, make sure you don't have media in a drive that is attempting to boot (i.e. floppy disk or CD/DVD, etc) as if any of those devices are set to boot before the hard drive and if there is media present it will attempt to read that first, obviously won't boot if the media isn't bootable, but will read it first anyway and potentially hold up the boot process

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Good thought Marko. I had a brand of flash drive once which did just what Bob described if it was left connected during boot.

BTW: I think most methods for creating a bootable USB flash drive involve an installation disc, which Bob has already said he doesn't have.

Cheers Grandpa.

I think you may be right Jim, I did a quick search earlier and probably misunderstood the title of that article - I know for my recovery CD's (which I probably couldn't put my hands on anymore) took something like 3 DVD's so trying to extract the info from that onto a bootable USB without some form of app to help would be near impossible. If anyone manages to figure this one out, I'd sure like to test drive it myself - I will try and have another look around a little later, see if I can dig something up or at least satisfy my own curiosity

James (Jim) Hillier, on 12 March 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

LOL!

Thanks so much for getting back to me so soon. I did think that the boot sectors were either corrupted or at the very least flaky. Jim, I ran both the programs that you suggested and they said that my hard drive was fine with no bad sectors found.(I had always thought that all hard drives left the factory with some bad sectors). So I guess my new question is; If the hard drive bootability (a new word) does go out completely, can I buy a new hard drive and load my recovery operating system on it? All my other programs and files are backed up on an external drive, so they won't be lost. Thanks, Bob

Bob, think Macrium Reflect may cover your needs on that one mate : https://freewarebb.com/files/file/7686-macrium-reflect-free/

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Yes Bob, you most likely could but it would be a 'restore to factory settings' recovery which is a destructive method. All updates, installed programs, settings and configurations would have to be applied over again - which is a heck of a chore.

Best method is what Marko suggested. Use something like Macrium Reflect free to create a full system image and keep that stored on an external drive. Create a fresh image every month until you have two or three images saved, then start deleting the oldest image each time you create a new one.

I don't think your MBR is damaged or corrupt because if that were the case the machine would generally not boot at all. The fact that you can still boot to the OS on most occasions suggests that a hardware component is on the way out. We could try a few things but the intermittent nature of the problem makes it impossible to know whether possible fixes have been successful or not.

I suspect that the black screen and flashing cursor will eventually become permanent and you will not be able to boot the OS at all. Until that happens, all you can do is take the necessary precautions which, with data backups and image creation, you will be doing.

Couple more questions: on those occasions when the OS will not boot, are you hearing any beeps at all? And how do you then get the machine to boot?

Cheers...Jim