Unable to boot or repair!

[Mr_Flibbles]

Hi. My system locked up the other day forcing me to power it off. When I started it back up again it wouldn't boot into WindowsXP. Instead, it checked the disks, found no errors, and then restarted the computer. This cycle continually repeated, rendering my computer unusable.

I tried booting from my XP CD so I could do a repair, but I got a blue screen of death with a registry error when doing so. I got the same error when trying to reinstall Windows.

Am I not thinking of something, or is there no way that I can boot/reinstall Windows/or even wipe my hard drive? Do I need to download 3rd party partition software in order to even get into my hard drive so I can delete Windows or start over? Or do I have a bad hard drive? I just replaced it a month ago, and hope I won't have to do so again.

HP 9760 (or something like that--I'm not at that computer. It's about 1 1/2 years old)
1.5Ghz P4
128MB PC600 RAM (I know, I need to upgrade!)
60GB HDD

Thanks for any advice.

 

[JP5]

It wouldn't hurt to try a new drive, 60GB is pretty small these days anyway. You can get a 120GB for $100 and 200GB for under $200. You could also try a new power supply.

 

[kinetic_tw]

I got the same error when trying to reinstall Windows

What error, exactly?

 

[DaveP]

Unless your hard drive is making some kind of noise, that's probably not the problem. And 60gb is plenty of room unless you store a lot of video on your computer.

Have you tried starting your computer in safe mode? To do so, hit F8 while the computer is starting. If you can get into windows try to use the system restore tool in Help and Support, and turn off the automatic restart so you can get the error messages, if they persist. Control Panel/System/click the Advanced tab/under Startup and Recovery click Settings. Uncheck the Automatic Restart under System Failure.
If all that doesn't help, here is something else to look at and see if any apply:

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314466" target="_new">Black Startup Screen Is Briefly Displayed, Computer Restarts Repeatedly</A>

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310396" target="_new">Windows XP Logon Screen Does not Appear and the Computer Continuously Restarts</A>

<b>Be very careful if you decide to edit the registry.</b>

About your setup problem:

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811150" target="_new">Setup Repeatedly Stops and Restarts</A>

I would also suggest that you make some boot disks, in case you have problems in the future:

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311073" target="_new">Creating a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition</A>

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305595" target="_new">HOW TO: Create a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP</A>

And, a system recovery disk:

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299526" target="_new">HOW TO: Re-Create a Missing Automated System Recovery Floppy Disk in Windows XP</A>

If none of this helps, you can take your hard drive out and put it in another computer to reformat it. Note: If your disk is formatted in NTFS, you'll need to reformat in a computer that is also NTFS. If it is FAT, you can use any windows operating system.

Good Luck!

My Daddy used to tell me:
<b>It's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're stupid,
then it is to open your mouth and prove it.</b>
I never was good at taking advice!

 

[Mr_Flibbles]

Hello everybody. Thanks for all the advice! I ended up using a WinXP boot disk and the resulting command prompt to manually delete Windows. I was then able to use the XP CD to install Windows again. Came out with minimal losses.

Thanks again.

 

[Crashman]

Hehe, I had to do that once when I overclocked my system a little too far, and the crash corrupted a few windows files. Funny thing this XP, it's supposed to be so reliable compared to 98SE, yet it's often (nearly) impossible to fix.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>