windows XP does not boot up

denz1968 · 14 Jul 2010 at 13:23

Hi all

A friends PC got a virus and I was asked to help her out. So I took the HDD drive out of her machine and put it into mine to run a virus scan. Bullguard removed all the viruses on there OK.

when I reinstalled the drive into the PC it starts up but when it gets to the point of going to the XP desktop screen it reboots, and continually reboots at this point.

I have tried safe mode, windows XP disc, (no repair option there).

Anyone help with this please. I did Google it but all i can find is some reference to user.dat and I aren't sure this is the problem.

Cheers

theheyes · 14 Jul 2010 at 18:02

I take it you have considered doing a reinstall? Can you not get into safe mode at all?

denz1968 · 14 Jul 2010 at 18:22

cant get into safe mode, just does the reboot loop.

Trying to solve without re-install if poss

j.col · 14 Jul 2010 at 20:19

this has happened to me a few times before.
some viruses attach them selves to windows files.
if you delete the virus, the virus deletes the file, so windows is corrupted.
only way is to reinstall.
if there is important data on hard drive, you can recover it.
on hirens boot cd disc (download it) there is a program called mini xp.
if you boot into hirens boot cd and load mini xp, then you can backup the important data.

denz1968 · 15 Jul 2010 at 08:36

j.col said:
this has happened to me a few times before.
some viruses attach them selves to windows files.
if you delete the virus, the virus deletes the file, so windows is corrupted.
only way is to reinstall.
if there is important data on hard drive, you can recover it.
on hirens boot cd disc (download it) there is a program called mini xp.
if you boot into hirens boot cd and load mini xp, then you can backup the important data.

Thanks for the info.

I can mount the drive in another pc to recover data and files.

I was trying to get a solution without having to reinstall the whole system again.

Cheers