Boot problem

chrisxuk · 24 May 2009 at 23:03

Had a look at my friends laptop this morning. Has Windows XP and when you turn it on it gets to the black screen that has the XP logo and the loading bad, then it just restarts :confused:

any idea whats wrong and how it can be fixed?

Memphis · 24 May 2009 at 23:34

A piece of hardware or software is causing the boot to fail.

Does it boot into safe mode?
Have you ran any hardware diagnostics? MemTest etc?

theheyes · 24 May 2009 at 23:37

I had this on a system last week. Chkdsk fixed it but in this particular case the hard drive sounded a bit dodgy so its getting replaced anyway.

Also try memtest as suggested above.

modo77 · 24 May 2009 at 23:46

And try the last known good config on the boot menu

chrisxuk · 25 May 2009 at 08:21

Tried booting into the 3 different types of safe mode but none would work

Daff_Duck · 25 May 2009 at 09:59

Try this mate bit of a life saver for me
When you boot up press F8 and choose option to safe mode with command prompt then type in %systemroot%/system32/restore/rstrui.exe

This should take you to the system restore and from there you can choose a restore point - hopefully you can make use of it and get the OS back to a working point.

If not have you got the original windows disc if you have you can us automated system recovery.

coupe69 · 25 May 2009 at 11:46

Boot up with a bart pe disk or similar, open command prompt, type chkdsk c:/f, reboot back up data, or use ghost or imaging software of choice, and change hard drive if any bad sectors are found by chkdsk, job done.