System Won't Boot

stiffyboy

stiffyboy

stiffyboy

Associate
Joined
11 Oct 2007
Posts
30
Location
newcastle
Hey I was wondering if anyone could help or tell me what the problem is. :):(

I have a system which has trouble booting.

It's not too old only about 2 years or so and has been having problems lately.

-takes a long time to boot, sometimes stuck on the very first boot page with no option to continue or anything, and sometimes I can't even get into the setup by pressing DEL. (has trouble identifying all/any my IDE drives i think)

-when Windows XP eventually loads, nothing happens, I only see my desktop picture. I have to go into Task Manager to end explorer.exe and then run it again for explorer to load.

-once I'm in I start a program, iTunes let's say, and it takes literally 2-5 mins to load, this applies to nearly all programs I try to start up.

Then most recently the system won't even boot.

-the booting up seems ok but after the "verifying DMI pools" it comes up with the page where you choose to start Windows in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with networking, Safe Mode with MS-DOS, Last Known Good Configuration and Start Windows normally.
-I have tried every one of those options and each time it starts loading the screen where you see the Windos XP logo and the loading bar. However, after that, the screen flashes, in less than a second, with a blue page with about 2 paragraphs of white writing and then one line underneath with some sort of code. It flashes so fast I can't read it at all. So after the flash it just restarts my system and it starts all over again bringing me back to that same page with those options.

-I have tried going into CMOS and choosing to load the "fail-safe defaults" and "optimized defaults" with no effect.

-The motherboard is an Abit uGuru KV8 PRO
-The Processor is an AMD Sempron 1.8GHz, although the BIOS sees it as an "AMD Hammer Family Processor".
-The RAM is just regular 1gb(2x512)
-The Graphics card is a GF 6200A 256MB

Can anyone help me or has seen something similar?

If anyone wants any more information about the system please ask! :)

Cheers in advance.

"stiffyboy"

P.S. - By the way, I'm pretty novice when it comes to this sort of thing, so I might not understand some technical terms you might say.
 
Welcome to the forums.

Well it's booting which is the main thing so there is a bottle neck somewhere.. I think the first thing you need to do is to check your RAM.. but before you do, check that the system is not over paging..

Read this.. It will help you to get started... then report back.

http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/Techpages/PCZone_TechieTalk_4.shtml


My initial thought is RAM.
 
Last edited:
ok cheers, i'll have a read now.

(edit) - ok just had a read of it now and it seems to make sense as to why my system was running so slow. But the problem is I can't get into the Task Manager on that system to check because the system won't boot. :S

Is there any way I can see how much the system is paging without going into Windows?
 
Last edited:
Have you had the case open to have a look inside? If you're a novice, and this hasn't been done for two years then I'd imagine there being a shed load of dust inside. This causes overheating and random errors. I'd take the cover off and blast it all out with a can of compressed air.
 
Clear the CMOS first ( if you cant locate the CMOS jumper then just carefully remove the battery.. wait a few minutes then reseat).

Once the CMOS is cleared try booting up again. You may get a "sum CHECK ERROR" but this is normal. just continue..

Does that get you into windows?

How big is your disk drive? Is there any chance that this has got to full..
 
MilanoChris said:
Have you had the case open to have a look inside? If you're a novice, and this hasn't been done for two years then I'd imagine there being a shed load of dust inside. This causes overheating and random errors. I'd take the cover off and blast it all out with a can of compressed air.
Click to expand...

funny you should say that because I actually opened it very recently because the gfx card heatsink/fan was making a proper weird noise, I cleared out some dust and it was all better. And yeah that sounds quite a plausible cause to my problem too, since there is a mountain of dust in there. I'll dust it out and see what happens.

what do you mean by compressed air? where can i get some?

in fact I'm gonna do what Huddy said and clear out the CMOS first before i clean the whole thing and see what happens.

the hard drive is 200gb I believe, and I'm quite sure that it's not too full
 
ok I just cleaned out my system with a hairdryer and I put it on COLD because I'm not that thick! lol. (The air coming out of the dryer was definately cold, not hot at all)

Anyway, I also replaced the CMOS battery.

This time it booted up with the message, as Huddy said, "checksum error"

I press F1 to continue and this time it loads the windows logo again, restarts the system, but then it loads this blue screen titled:

"VIA Tech. VT8237 SATA RAID BIOS Ver 4.31"

In the top right part of the screen there is a red "NOTICE" that flashes with a message under it, also in red, saying "The number of disks is not adequate to create RAID!!!" (yes there are 3 exclamation marks)

Under that it has the options:

F1 : View Array/disk Status
Up, Down: Move to next item
Enter : Confirm the selection
ESC : Exit

The only option that I can use is the ESC option which when pressed, it asks me "Do you really want to exit the utility? (Y/N)"

In the top left part of the screen there is a list of options which seem to be faded out ie. not selectable:

>Create Array
>Delete Array
>Create/Delete Spare
>Select Boot Array
>Serial Number View

On the bottom half of the screen there is a table that looks like this:

Channel | Drive Name | Array Name | Mode | Size(GB) | Status
Serial_Ch0 Master No Drive
Serial_Ch1 Master No Drive

(The "Serial_..." bit is under the "Channel" column and the "No Drive" bit is underneath the Drive name colum)

Any ideas?

cheers.
 
Youve just reset the BIOS and I expect it defaults to a raid set up.
Thats what all that blurb means.

Basically its lost it way when it boots.
You need to go into the BIOS and reset it.

Not reset as such, just turn off the raid and tell the BIOS what disc to boot to.

Added...
If if comes back to how it was in your first post once you have the boot order right
-the booting up seems ok but after the "verifying DMI pools" it comes up with the page where you choose to start Windows in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with networking, Safe Mode with MS-DOS, Last Known Good Configuration and Start Windows normally.

Do a system repair.....change boot order to boot from CD and have the windows CD in the drive.
Hit any key to boot from CD and let it run, and it will come to install screen.
READ it and hit R to repair.

I would run chkdsk
 
Last edited:
stiffyboy said:
how do i reset the BIOS?
ok
Click to expand...

You prolly reset the BIOS to default when you changed the battery.
Now you have to set it to suit your system.

You enter the BIOS by hitting delete when you turn PC on, but please go get manual and read it.

I also added some stuff to my post about chkdsk.

The manual is here for the KV8 Pro.
 
Last edited:
Do you know whether you have an IDE or sata hard drive?
Looks to me like it's booting to sata if you get that message, tho I haven't read the manual to be sure.
Link added to my last post for the KV8 Pro manual (if that is the board)
 
I'm not 100% sure i'll have a look. At the moment the start screen loads but doesn't show the drive, when it does show it goes so quick i can't see it. My gut instinct is that it's an IDE drive because i haven't seen the letters SATA in the start up screen at all.

But i've ran into another problem... The actual DVD drive won't open, i can hear it trying to open when i press eject but it gets stuck. I've even tried using the pin hole thing with no luck. i'm gonna take the DVD-Drive out and try and fix it.

cheers for the link.
 
When you have the case open look at the lead going into the hard drive.
A large ribbon cable means an IDE drive, and thin one means sata.

Thin sata here.

The message in your other post "VIA Tech. VT8237 SATA RAID BIOS Ver 4.31"
means its trying to boot to that.

Good luck with the drive, and just ask on here how to do a repair with chkdsk if your stuck.
 
ok. Just disassembled my DVD drive, had to break the warranty seal but was worth it in the end! Seems I over poked the pinhole and forced the plastic cog upwards, therefore the sliding mechanism didn't work... reassembled it, and it works! so chuffed with myself! lol! :)

ANYWAY...

Yes split, the HDD is IDE. So does that mean my BIOS is trying to load a SATA drive that doesn't exist? or were you unsure about that.

Anyway I'm booting from CDROM at the mo, I'll let you know how I get on.
 
ok. I just booted from CDROM, pressed R to repair, didn't seem to do much then asked me to type EXIT in console to restart the computer. After that, no progress, still the same problem as before, gets to the "start windows normally etc." screen and restarts again.

so what's chkdsk?

(edit) - Never mind, I used my initiative and typed in chkdsk in the console. But... it seems to be stuck at 25%.

(edit2 - 21:02) - 29%. yay.

(edit3 - 21:06) - CHKDSK found one or more errors on the volume.
195350368 kilobytes total disk space.
17767448 kilobytes are available.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
48837592 total allocation units on disk.
4441862 allocation units available on disk.

C:\>/
 
Last edited:
did fixboot and it booted up ok!!!:D:D:D

thanks so much to everyone who helped.:D:D

special cheers to split. your help was brilliant, the way you described "press any key to boot from CD" etc. was brilliant. cheers bud.:D:D:D

thanks again!!! cheers!!!:D

stiffyboy.:p
 
I knew that would fix it.
The recovery console can be a bit daunting.

Help is at hand though...all you need to do is type help at the prompt for a list of commands you can use.
If you need more help with a command you would type chkdsk/?

You might also note it seems to hang as if nothing is happening for a bit...thats normal so don't panic!
 
It's really weird but woke up this morning, tried to boot the system and the exact same problem happend again... I had to boot from CD again and do chkdsk, fixboot before it worked again. In fact I'm using the system right now to post this.

I'm running virus, spyware scans at the mo. I also reviewed my start up utility thing (RUN > msconfig) because I messed around with it before, so now Windows starts normally. I think that might have been my problem.

I'll see what happens and report back if I have any more problems.

Cheers again for the chkdsk tip ;).
 
If you get to the screen that says boot in normal or safe etc and end up in the re-booting loop it's prolly chkdsk that is fixing it and not fixboot.

If this keeps happening it would suggest a bigger problem. Either a TSR program (Terminate and Stay Resident) basically one that doesn't let go when you shut down or a bad connection (check your IDE leads) or maybe the hard disc has seen better days and so on.

You may also want to check your memory just in case. http://www.memtest86.com/

Quick thought....whats the deffrag state of the disc like?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom