Computer suddenly won't boot windows, just keeps restarting

[gipper51]

I need help with a machine I built for a guy a few months ago. His machine will not boot windows at all. It will start the windows screen and after a few seconds it will reboot and start over. If I try to boot in safe mode or last known good mode it will immediately compile a list that looks like a scan that has info such as "partition 0/partition1/windows/system32/drivers.sys" or something to that effect. Every line has hard drive partitions and system 32 driver files listed. After the listed info it will reboot again. I'm thinking I need to wipe the hard drive and reinstall. Does this soud fixable.

Thanks for any help,
Gipper

 

[Direwolf20]

When you do F8, instead of choosing Safe mode, can you choose something like "Don't automatically reboot on error"?

 

[elation]

That will probably fix the problem but there are few things you might want to try first.
-Boot to an XP CD and choose the recovery console.
You can run a chkdsk, fixmbr, or help for full list of commands.

I'd recommend a full scan for bad sectors and/or a HDD diagnostics. Gotta wonder what caused the corruption in the first place.

If the drive is good, I'm sure the reinstall will fix it too.

 

[gipper51]

When you do F8, instead of choosing Safe mode, can you choose something like "Don't automatically reboot on error"?

I don't have the machine in front of me so I'm going off memory here. I believe the options it gave for booting up were normal, safe mode, safe mode with networking, and a last known good setup option. The guy who owns the machine said he tried doing the repair/recovery with the CD and it didn't help, just took him to the option to format the hard drive. Been a while since I've run windows repair so I don't recall what the procedure was like. I havn't tried running it myself so I will try that again before formatting. I think the hard drive is working good, but it's anyone's guess as to what screwed it up.

Should I be OK to pull his hard drive and use it in my external drive to copy his files before I erase and start over (if needed).

Thanks for the help.
Gipper

 

[S1nF1xx]

Boot off the windows CD and get into the recovery console. Type chkdsk /r
Let checkdisk run. This is the first step you should take. You'd be amazed how many times a chkdsk will bail you out of trouble.

1. Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.

Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.
4. When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
5. At the command prompt, type the appropriate commands to diagnose and repair your Windows XP installation.

For a list of commands that are available in Recovery Console, type recovery console commands or help at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

For information about a specific command, type help commandname at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
6. To exit the Recovery Console and restart the computer, type exit at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

 

[silvscorp]

have you OCed the computer? Did you chek/swapped ram?

Did the user do anything to the computer prior to this error occured? May be he tried to OC the computer?

 

[number69]

I need help with a machine I built for a guy a few months ago. His machine will not boot windows at all. It will start the windows screen and after a few seconds it will reboot and start over. If I try to boot in safe mode or last known good mode it will immediately compile a list that looks like a scan that has info such as "partition 0/partition1/windows/system32/drivers.sys" or something to that effect. Every line has hard drive partitions and system 32 driver files listed. After the listed info it will reboot again. I'm thinking I need to wipe the hard drive and reinstall. Does this soud fixable.

Thanks for any help,
Gipper

If you rule out disk errors I would look to the motherboard, specifically bad capacitors. Reason I say this is I had a rig that would do the same thing, start loading Windows and just reboot, it was an endless cycle. I checked everything I could, wound up it was bad caps on the mobo, they weren't holding a charge. You can look and see if you have any caps that are swollen or have yellow or red crap on the top of them.