XP won't boot until after safe mode?

[Jono]

Hi,

I'm not sure why, but in the past couple of days my pc, running xp pro, has decided to not boot into windows from a cold start (i.e. being switched off, for example overnight).

It does the windows xp loading screen; the one with the blue bar for a while, but then it pauses for a split second then continues for another second then just hangs.

The only way around it seems to be to boot into safe mode when it brings up the "windows did not load successfully..." or whatever screen and then reboot. I change nothing in safe mode once I'm in there.

From then on it'll boot normally until the next time it's fully shutdown.
Anyone have any idea why or how to fix it?

Thanks,

 

[Brian Stuart]

Insert the XP CD into the PC, select "boot from CD" as 1st option in the BIOS, Press any key when asked.
Select R at the first screen and then run "fixmbr", "fixboot" and "chkdsk /r"
That should help.

 

[Jono]

Well those didn't work. In fact the last one completely killed it. Had to re-reinstall :\
However. I think I worked out what it does.

Either the power supply or SATA cables. I noticed that one of the hard disks I wasn't using wasn't quite plugged in properly, and all the SATA cables for the HD/s I was using were really quite squashed/maybe damaged.

I'm still using them, but I'll go to a shop tonight/ocuk and buy new ones just in case. I straightened them out, rerouted them around hard drive holders and it seems much happier.

Shame I deleted the partition on my backup external hard drive :| Managed to recover most of the data, but some acronis images are corrupt - can still get bits and pieces off them however, not a total loss