Leaky water killed XP?

[Ducky Spud]

Ran the repair XP from the disk, all seemed fine, did the "restart then setup will continue" and it gets a bit further into the booting process, but still fails on the Windows screen. (it used to fail straight away, now its after 10 seconds or so). That also made me unable to boot to Windows7 so had to repair that as well

Running a scan over the partition XP is installed on with Avast at the moment, doubt it will find anything thats stopping it booting as it was fine before, but worth a shot I guess.

Hornett, its set to boot from disk, so thats where it checks first, doesnt check the PCI slots

 

[hornett]

Hornett, its set to boot from disk, so thats where it checks first, doesnt check the PCI slots

Are you sure got this for MS

Power-On Self Test

As soon as you turn on a computer, its central processing unit (CPU) begins to carry out the programming instructions contained in the basic input/output system (BIOS). The BIOS, which is a type of firmware, contains the processor-dependent code that starts the computer regardless of the operating system installed. The first set of startup instructions is the power-on self test (POST). The POST is responsible for the following system and diagnostic functions:

Performs initial hardware checks, such as determining the amount of memory present

Verifies that the devices needed to start an operating system, such as a hard disk, are present

Retrieves system configuration settings from nonvolatile complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) memory, which is located on the motherboard

The contents of CMOS memory remain even after you shut down the computer. Examples of hardware settings stored in CMOS memory include boot order and Plug and Play information.

After the motherboard POST completes, add-on adapters that have their own firmware (for example, video and hard drive controllers) carry out internal diagnostic tests.

To access and change system and peripheral firmware settings, consult the system documentation provided by the manufacturer.

Initial Startup Phase

After the POST, the settings that are stored in CMOS memory, such as boot order, determine the devices that the computer can use to start an operating system. For example, if the boot order specifies the floppy disk as the first startup device and the hard disk as second (some firmware displays this order as “A, C”), the following scenarios might occur at startup:

So it checked hardware first. XP must be doing something that 7 doesn't

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457123.aspx