BSOD on bootup or Windows CD boot

Depending on what all is on the hard drive... this is one of those cases where the following might just be your easiest and least time consuming solution:

1. Get a new hard drive.

2. Reinstall your OS.

3. Configure your new system.

4. Hook up your old hard drive and copy over any files you need/want to keep.

NOTE: I'm assuming that you don't have some other type of hardware problem (bad memory, etc). The "good news" is that if you do... you'll probably be more likely to discover it this way.

Sometimes its just easier to move forward than to keep spinning your wheels in the mud. Now, this is a BIG IF because it depends on what all is on your system. You didn't say. So if this is a system which requires LOTS of time to rebuild or LOTS of configuration you'll have to weigh your options a little more carefully.

My rule of thumb (personally) has been that I can build a new system with all updates in about 2 hours then copy over the files I need in another hour or so. If "troubleshooting" is going to take me longer than that... I might as well rebuild the system and save myself the time.

Your mileage may vary...

Do you have a custom rig? It could be a bad / unsupported miniport driver:

Windows XP requires a miniport driver to communicate with the hard disk controller that is used to start your computer. If Windows XP does not supply a device driver for your controller or if Windows XP is using a corrupted or incompatible driver, you must replace the driver with a valid copy that is compatible with your controller and Windows XP.

I second the above answers- if you get a BSOD when booting from CD, you have a hardware issue, most likely bad memory or a dodgy motherboard.

For future reference, as I said in a comment, that STOP code (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE) is more often than not a misconfiguration; a mismatch between what NTLDR/WINLOAD sees and NTOSKRNL sees for the system drive. Disk or controller problems usually manifest themselves sooner during POST.

Wrong drivers.

Another cause is moving an IDE disk to another position (primary or secondary, master or slave.)

If you are planning to reinstall anyway, you could try booting to a linux live cd, and use fdisk (or your favorite partitioner) blow away any partitions and the mbr then try using the windows cd.

The Partition Magic liveCD has several tools that may solve your problem.

Pull the drive out. Boot from a CD. Put the Drive into a USB/Firewire/eSata enclosure and fix the MBR after booting, if that works for you.

It looks like the problem had something to do with the SATA/RAID configuration in the BIOS. Windows couldn't see anything connected to the SATA controller at all. I just went into the BIOS and configured the drive to be mapped as IDE, rather than SATA, that solved it. Naturally this is someone from the office's home computer, and I don't have time to mess with it anymore, so as long as it's working I'm happy.

Thanks!