Booting mishap

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board2death986

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2005
Messages
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alright well my computer isn't exactly booting correctly. It will show the regular boot screen, and load up all the drives just fine as usual, but when it gets to the point where it would load windows or load off of my windows Cd, the screen goes blank. The monitor is still recieving signal, but there is no further output to the screen, it isn't frozen as i can still ctrl_alt_del to restart, or push the button for a shutdown, but the OS won't load. I loaded the drive onto another computer and there don't seem to be any errors on it, and i checked each video card individually as well as in SLI and reversed, but video seems to be fine, memory seems to be running fine. . .so :confused: . . . fudge. . .any ideas what the problem could be? my only ideas seem to come from something on the motherboard . . .HELP PLEASE!!!
 
Have you tried booting into safe mode, last know good, or enable VGA mode? Did you change your screen size or refresh frequency before this happened?
 
See if you can boot into safe mode and try to restore it to a time before this happend.
 
1. Yea, it's booting off the correct drive.
2. didn't change any settings, and tried it on both a crt and lcd.
3. how do i manually go about starting in safe mode? there is no prompt for it, as soon as i select to boot windows it goes blank (i had installed vista, but even though i removed it, i still get a prompt whether to boot off of XP or vista).
 
To get to the safe mode menu you need to press F8 when windows first starts to load. Sounds like your problem has to do with the windows vista boot loader. When you installed Vista it replaced XP's boot loader with it's own. Vista installed files on the primary active partition. You will have to delete those files and fix the boot loader.
If you can get back into windows, try this. Start=>Run type "msconfig" (without the quotes) and hit enter. Go to the BOOT.INI tab and select "Check All Boot Paths". select "OK" and "Apply". Do not select "Restart" at this point, but choose "Exit Without Restart" instead.

Next, you must delete the following files and folders from the root of your System drive or partition (Usually Drive C:\)

$RECYCLE.BIN
Boot (folder)
Boot.BAK
BOOTSECT.BAK

If you can't get back into windows XP you could try booting from the XP CD and doing a repair.
 
as i said in my OP, i already tried booting off the windows cd for a repair, and i get the same blank screen. But when i boot windows before it goes blank it does give me an error about the Boot.ini file, so that is most likely the cause, i just didn't notice it before because it changes a split second later. I can delete the files from another computer, but that doesn't help me with the first step.
 
If you booted from the CD and got a blank screen then you have a hardware problem. So the BIOS screen displays OK and you can go in and change your boot order? The screen must be going black when the resolution changes to 800 by 600 for the XP logo screen. I believe the BIOS menu screen displays at the lowest resolution of 640 by 480. Have you got another video card to try in that PC?
 
well yes, this is the main computer in my sig, which is running two cards in SLI, but I've tried running off each card individually as well as in SLI, i might try switching the cards next.
 
switching the video card didn't work . . ill try fixing the boot by installing the drive into my other computer and deleting the files there. . .
 
tried running a repair install but it asks for an adminstrator password, which i don't have. . .is there a default password?
 
The first repair option takes you to the recovery console and asks for a password. If you didn't set an administrator password try just leaving the password part blank and hitting enter. There is also another repair option farther into the install menu.
XP Repair install

Boot the computer using the XP CD.
You may need to change the boot order in the system BIOS so the CD boots before the hard drive.
Check your system documentation for steps to access the BIOS and change the boot order.
When you see the "Welcome To Setup" screen, you will see the options below
This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft Windows XP to run on your computer:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.

Press Enter to start the Windows Setup.
Do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R", (you Do Not want to load Recovery Console).
I repeat, do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R".
Accept the License Agreement and Windows will search for existing Windows installations.
Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair.
Setup will copy the necessary files to the hard drive and reboot.
Do not press any key to boot from CD when the message appears.
Setup will continue as if it were doing a clean install, but your applications and settings will remain intact.
 
thank you, but there is one problem, i still cannot get the windows cd running on the computer in question, if i was to run this on another computer, would it screw with my drivers?
 
board2death986 said:
thank you, but there is one problem, i still cannot get the windows cd running on the computer in question.
Click to expand...
OK, tell me in steps how you are trying to boot from the CD and at what point it fails. What happens to stop you from going any further?



board2death986 said:
If i was to run this on another computer, would it screw with my drivers?
Click to expand...
Yes, IF the other PC has different hardware you will just make things worse by moving it and trying to do a repair.
 
Alright, well both problems basically are the same. The computer boots, goes through bios and checks with no issues, but when i get to the point where i choose to boot off which hard drive, as soon as i choose the hard drive with XP (it still shows the vista install even though it is not there), it shows an error saying invalid boot.ini, loading from C:\WINDOWS , and the screen then goes blank, but still receives signal.
When booting off the CD it's most of the same, as soon as i press to confirm booting off the cd, it gives the message checking configuration settings. . . then goes blank the same way.
 
i believe i solved the problem partially. . . i put one of my other dvd-rom drives and it boots up the windows cd fine. . my dvd-rw might be another sad victim of starforce :mad: . . so now im about to run the setup/repair, hopefully it works *crosses fingers*
 
it went through the install process once, but i messed up in the options and had to reboot, next time up. . . it did it again. . with a different optical drive. . .im thinking the motherboard is the root of all evils here. . .ill try with one more drive before i call it a lost cause and look up my warranty info.
 
I had the exact same issue a couple days ago, couldn't figure it out and had to reformat my drive. Wouldn't boot into safe mode, just displayed a long list of file names. My monitor wouldn't display the bios unless I unplugged by DVI cable and plugged it back in. It said 'Video Mode Not Supported'" With those errors, the best I can explain it is corrupted Windows files, seeing as it wouldn't boot in safe mode and I was having all kinds of video problems that seem like driver issues, but all hardware passed the initial bios inspection.
 
ok got it working partly, windows cd booted but it wouldn't recognize my windows install, so i tried it again and did the repair option, tried the bootcfg /rebuild and so on and so forth trying anything to fix the boot configuration, but then i figure it's just time i reinstall windows anyway, and low and behold now the windows CD won't boot again!!!! i replaced the mobo today, but that didnt fix it, its not the memory, its not the PSU, its not the video cards, its not the hard drives stopping the cd from booting. . the only thing i can imagine is the cpu?? but how could that be the problem. . . i also tried using my windows media center disc from my laptop to boot, that didn't work either. . .IM ReAlLy lost, HELP mE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD :confused:
 
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