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

 

[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?

 

[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..