Urgent help required

[AHarvey]

Hi all,

Got a bit of a problem. My mates PC decided to die on him. He was playing FarCry 2 and it just reset. Everytime he tries to boot up it gets to the windows loading screen, looks to be loading then you just see a blue screen flash up and it resets again. So, he has asked me to come and have a look at it as its got some important work stuff on that he needs asap.

I have tried booting in safe mode, it starts to load the drivers and then hangs when it gets to windows/system32/drivers/Mup.sys then resets again. Luckily I have brought along a knoppix Live CD so I can get online but I have no idea how to use it

Can't find his windows CD at the moment though which is a PITA, could this just be a case of a software/driver problem? He hasn't touched any drivers etc for at least 2 months so its odd that it has just gone.

Any advice gratefully received. Going to email his work stuff to his work email now which should stop him sweating

 

[Locke]

Do you know what the error said on the bluescreen before it restarts? or does it restart too fast? Cause then we can narrow down the issue.

And if you're emailing the files already, then you know how Knoppix works

 

[hegemon]

Come across something similar like this, removing any external usb devices allowed the machine to boot then plugging said devices back in to different usb ports, no idea why

 

[AHarvey]

rofl, I have no idea how knoppix works just using gmail to get the files emailed out, its pretty basic stuff but its the more advanced stuff that stumps me! for instance, I changed to desktop 2 now my menu bar at the bottom disappered and I can't get it back

Back to the problem though, it really is just a flash of blue and white, just a fraction of a second so no idea what it says

Come across something similar like this, removing any external usb devices allowed the machine to boot then plugging said devices back in to different usb ports, no idea why

I'll give it a try, wonder if its anything to do with my portable HDD he was backing up for me? that is on its way out! I'll give it a try now

 

[AHarvey]

All usb devices removed but no joy

found xp home cd so going to try that!

 

[chronic86]

set bios to load fail safe or reset the cmos... also unplug anything unnecessary dvd/cd rom etc. try with just 1 stick of ram/reseating gfx cards etc. i had a strange poblem last night was playing crysis warhead and my screen just started to switch its self off, re-seated gfx card and all is well.

 

[swinnie]

Reseating the GFX Card is always worth a shot. And so is resetting the CMOS.

It its stalling on a file, you could always try a repair install with the XP CD, this will leave your data intact and just repair your windows files.