Awe...poop. XP on an endless restart cycle - HELP!!

[DellAxim]

Today I was using my computer (homemade P4, XP pro) and it froze. I restarted, and after the "Windows XP" logo shows for a few seconds it restarts again. And again. And again. If I try safe mode it does the same thing.

Anybody have any thoughts on what I should do or how I can narrow down the problem?

[mecca]

chances are you're getting an inaccessible boot device error. if so, run Recovery from your xp cd and use "fixboot".

[BlackTigers91]

chances are you're getting an inaccessible boot device error. if so, run Recovery from your xp cd and use "fixboot".
Good Idea. Try "FixMBR" as well.....worked for me :/

Try resetting Your CMOS, Might do something :)

[DellAxim]

Great...now to find my xp CD that I haven't used in 2 years. :o If I can't find it will an XP home CD work?

[mecca]

Great...now to find my xp CD that I haven't used in 2 years. :o If I can't find it will an XP home CD work?

i'm on a store bought XP SP2 installation, and i was able to use my friend's dell OEM SP1 recovery cd... so i think absolutely

[DellAxim]

Alright, I tried both of those things and they had no effect what so ever. :( Any other ideas?

[Forthy]

When you did the above did you also try a repair? (NOT the recovery console)?

To do this (assuming you don't already know), when you boot from the XP CD and get to the bit about repairing or installing, and go against the obvious and go on as though you're going to install it fresh. When you get to the next screen (or maybe the one after) it will detect the partitions and show you them so you can decide whether you want to format etc. If you select your OS partition there is an option to repair that partition, which you select and off it goes.

It's like the good ol' "soft install" we all used to do with win98 when it went to rats, and just re-install's the system files, but leaves your personal files alone. Will help if something's been corrupted.

HTH :)

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/156565.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=156565&tm=33) http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1418.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1418)

[DellAxim]

To do this (assuming you don't already know), when you boot from the XP CD and get to the bit about repairing or installing, and go against the obvious and go on as though you're going to install it fresh. When you get to the next screen (or maybe the one after) it will detect the partitions and show you them so you can decide whether you want to format etc. If you select your OS partition there is an option to repair that partition, which you select and off it goes.

When I try that it says "The partition is either too full, damaged, not formatted, or formatted with an incompatible file system. To continue installing windows, setup must format this partition".

Am I screwed? :confused:

[0ldman]

Go to a bud's, download BartPE. Setup, create ISO, burn to CD.
Boot BartPE, run chkdsk /f.

Depending on the results... if you have massive errors, skip to the end.

Go to c:\windows\system32\config, cut all the registry files, system, security, software, etc, create a new folder, paste into the folder for backup.

Open file manager, go to system volume information on c:

You'll see all sorts of folders, can't remember the name right now. Go to one of the last ones, open, find folder named "snapshot", open, find _registry files and copy them all, paste into c:\Windows\system32\config and rename _registry_systemblah to system, rename _registry_securityblah to security, etc.

Restart, remove CD and pray. You just manually restored the registry in Windows XP.

If that didn't work, I wish you the best of luck. :)
Its probably a drive corruption and you need to either format and find out what corrupted the file system or hope you have enough life left on the drive to backup before it pukes.