Please help my PC wont boot!

[delambo]

I am running windows XP sp2. I was using it fine before I went to work and closed dwn as usual. When I got home the light in the middle of the power switch was flashing. I moved the mouse and nothing happened so I pressed a few keys, ten tried ctrl+alt+del but still nothing. I then tried pressing and releasing the power button but again nothing. I pressed and held the power button to shut the machine down then pressed the button to turn it on.

Now I got a black screen followed by a white bar from the left to the right, ten the windows splash screen. This continued for some time then it reboted,and repeated the process several times.

At this point the wife told me that she used the PC earlier and insted of shutting it down.

I tried switching the machine off at the wall then restarting and selcting normal start at the safe mode prompt. Again it just kept getting to the normal point where it would show the user list and it restarts over and over again.

I unplugged the machine again and selected last known good configuration but no change when I try to boot.

Finally I unplugged the machine again and selected safe mode. I get the dos type prompts scrolling down the screen and when it gets to the point at wich it sould enter safe mode, it just restarts again and again and again!!!!

I have entered the bios and checked that all is OK there and it does appear to be so.

What can I do now?!

[Wheeler777]

you say you have entered the bios and all seems ok, have you loaded the bios setup defaults and rebooted, this seems it could be a corrupt or misconfigured bios problem, if this does not help it would make it easier if you posted your system specs. l8r


W

[mrowley]

delambo it sounds like 1 of 2 things

1 . your computer caught i virus which now resides in the boot of your machine, probably in a dll like shell32.dll (hence why windows loads all its services (the Windows Splash) but then not the desktop.

2 . A file or service gor corrupted by a peice of hardware or memory confilct.

Solution

Press F8 on boot as you have been doing choose "Disable automatic restart on system failure" then hit enter twice.

When the pc reboots itself it should stop on a blue screen "BSOD" mke a note of the first 0x00000.. number (the 1 at the top not in brackets) and if their is a file name like system.dll listed make a note of that too

THen find a PC with an internet connection and go here : www.updatexp.com/stop-messages.html

Look for the number matching your problem. It will give you full info on How, Why it happend and how to fix it.

Hope this helps

Mick

[lincsat]

If it's only a corrupt file you could fix it with a windows installation disk - don't do a new installation, tell it to repair your existing windows installation.

[sarvo_uk]

I would agree woth mrowley. These are symptoms of a virus. See if you could get into the safe mode and run a virus scan.

[Wheeler777]

ok m8 nothing wrong with other advice but dont ignore the bios it could solve it,
and so could the other possible solutions, lets face it were all guessing to some degree, ok the bios should not corrupt for no reason, but the fact is they do.
quite possibly im wrong and the problem lies elswhere, but never discount anything, because that one thing you skip may be the solution. how many of us have spent hours trying to solve a problem then gone back and found it. l8r.

W

[the insaan]

the last time i had a fault like this, it was caused by a faulty Graphics card, i am not saying that is the case here, but if all software issues fail then you may have to look for hardware issues

[delambo]

Thanks for the advise guys. I have already tried loading the bios defaults and this did not work. I will try the other suggestions tomorrow and report how I get on.

A few months ago my graphics card crashed but came back OK after a restart, That might ave been the early signs of a deeper problem.

[mrowley]

@ Wheeler

Dude i totally agree, never rule out any possibility no matter how small or you'll end up fighting a loosing battle, and kicking youself when you see you overlooked your problems at the begining.

Mick

[delambo]

Thanks for the help, but I am having a few problems with this.

Originally Posted by mrowley

Press F8 on boot as you have been doing choose "Disable automatic restart on system failure" then hit enter twice.

I acctually press delete to enter my bios but thats beside the by. The problem I have here is I cant see the option for disbale automatic restart. Any other suggestions?

Originally Posted by lincsat

If it's only a corrupt file you could fix it with a windows installation disk - don't do a new installation, tell it to repair your existing windows installation.

I dont have an XP home edition cd, my machine only came with a restore disc, and otherwise I only have XP pro and 98se on cd.

Originally Posted by sarvo_uk

See if you could get into the safe mode and run a virus scan.

I get the same problems when I try to load in safe mode.

Thanks again for all the help, I do hope I can restore this rather than have to format and start again, my hd has nearly 200 gig of stuff I just cant afford to lose.