Boot problem

[ajm]

A friend of mine has been having a problem trying to boot his pc.It is not a newly built pc and has been working ok for a while now.But yesterday when he switched it on it would get to the black screen with the XP logo and the blue bar going accross and just restart and just keep doing the same thing over and over.Even safe mode does the same.Any suggestins?

Spec as much as i know
P4 3.4
Win XP home
512mb 3200 ram

 

[thewonderstoat]

A friend of mine has been having a problem trying to boot his pc.It is not a newly built pc and has been working ok for a while now.But yesterday when he switched it on it would get to the black screen with the XP logo and the blue bar going accross and just restart and just keep doing the same thing over and over.Even safe mode does the same.Any suggestins?

Spec as much as i know
P4 3.4
Win XP home
512mb 3200 ram

Is he overclocking at all...that''d be my first thought? Any tinkering with the bios such as too aggressive memory timings? Has he tried memtest off a floppy? What about using an Ubuntu live evaluation CD to see whether it is a problem with windows?

 

[Admiral Huddy]

First thoughts are:

Any new drivers or software installed recently?

Maybe one of the Windows start-up files is missing or corrupted?

there is a hard disk problem.


Can you get hold of an Emergency Recovery Disk, to boot into windows from disk rather than hard disk? You may need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS.

From here, you can then check the hard disks. If the H/Ds are ok, and you got into windows from the ERD, then backup you data, grab the XP install disk and run a Repair. This will repair any damaged system files. You will need to re-install any drivers and HOT fixes but the user data remains intact.

If your mate has installed new software or drivers recently, then again, grab the ERD and try uninstalling them from windows, then try again.

 

[ajm]

Is he overclocking at all

No

Has he tried memtest off a floppy

He doesn't have a floppy drive.

What about using an Ubuntu live evaluation CD

What is this and where can he get it?

Can you get hold of an Emergency Recovery Disk

Yes he does have this disc but it didn't get that far to work.Afaik he hasn't instaslled anything new.

From here, you can then check the hard disks

How is this done?

 

[Admiral Huddy]

If you can't get into windows using a recovery disk, then it has be hardware related but you say you’ve not changed any hardware?

Are you sure it's booting from the recovery disk.. Make sure the recovery disk is the primary boot device.


When I say check the disks, I mean check that the primary partition where windows is installed isn't full.

The other disk check you need to do is a CHECKDISK.. See if you can get a DOS disk, and boot into a command line and run with the /Autofix switch. This will check for bad sectors and attempt to repair them... it maybe that the windows files are sitting in a bad sector. If this works and/or it does report H/D fault, look at replacing he hard-disk.

If you have backups, I would try the Windows Repair function by inserting the windows installation disk.

 

[thewonderstoat]

AFAIK memtest can be run off a bootable CD.....

Ubuntu can be found here....lengthy download....make sure u use the Live Eval version, and boot from it....


http://www.ubuntu.com/download

 

[ajm]

@thewonderstoat Thanks for the link and he tried memtest cd version and that was fine.

@Admiral Huddy It was booting from the recovery disc but not getting past first line.

In the end i decided to put a proper cd version of winXP not a restore jobby and it got to the recovery console with the c prompt.It turned out that it was an unmountable boot volume.When i used chkdsk /r it fixed the error and now he is back into windows.He has lost the use of his wireless keyboard and his internet but at least he can back up all his work and do a fresh install.

Thanks for all the help..