For the second time in some months, I’ve had some strange boot problems: suddenly I can no more boot into Windows XP (boot process stops just after the POST screen, with a blank screen with a blinking cursor) neither boot from the Windows CD (it stops at 'Verifying hardware). However I can boot with no problems from Linux live CD, and then I see all my HDs. So it doesn’t seem a HW problem (I can solve it by low level formatting my primary HD) and I think it could be related to a boot sector virus problem. First time I was using Internet Network Security, last time I got this problem I was using Avast Free Home version (with updated virus definitions) and Kerio Personal Firewall 4.; never I got a virus alert before. Do you think is a virus problem ?
No. Well, it’s my guess.
If you could boot with Windows CD, I’ll bet on bad cluster or system boot files corruption.
But as you can’t get there, maybe the boot sector of your HDD is avoiding windows to lauch. It’s well known that if you don’t have an HDD, Windows CD won’t launch. On contrary, Linux Live CD works on this situation.
Maybe you can test http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/systemrescuecd/systemrescuecd-x86-0.2.14.iso