I was trying to help my son do a "recovery" (reinstall original software) to the pc he used in college. It had been configured to run on the school network with Novell. We could not get the pc to boot from the CD drive so we started messing around with the recovery console. We ended up "redirecting" the boot sequense to the d: drive and now the machine will not boot at all (black screen). Is there any way to get back to the recovery console so we can reset the boot sequence back to the bios or hard drive (whichever it was originally ?) ??? Please help !

Even if you "redirect" the boot priority to his optical device (d:), the HDD remains bootable as long as there is no bootable cd on the CDROM drive for you to actuate when prompted. If it makes you feel any better, you can go back into the BIOS to change the boot priority back to the HDD, but I doubt that will resolve the issue. When Google isn't your best pal

You don't need to use the recovery console to change the boot sequence. You only use the recovery console when something is wrong with your operating system (Windows). The boot sequence is a BIOS matter, so it happens before the operating system comes into play. You did not specify what motherboard or computer you have (Manufacturer/Model: Noname). Each manufacturer has a different key to access BIOS. F1, F2, F10, DEL are some of the keys I've seen that were used. Basically you hit one of those keys in the first few seconds as your computer is booting up (around the time when it starts checking the memory). You will then be taken to the BIOS screen, where you can change your boot sequence. You don't even need to change BIOS settings to change boot sequences for some motherboards. F6 or F8 will cause the computer to display a list of possible boot devices (all your hard drives, optical drives, floppy, zip). All you have to do then is identify which one you want to boot from, and it'll try to boot from that device. Now, back to your problem. You said you were messing around with the recovery console for Windows, which was a big No-No since you didn't have any Windows problem. You're going to have to go back to recovery console to repair whatever changes you had made. If you happened to do something drastic like delete your boot sector record or something, then you might need to re-install Windows XP.