My WinXP refuses to start

tallgeeze

Hello all

Lately I had had annoying trouble with my windows XP starting up. For the past couple of months when I turn on my computer it would sometimes get stuck on the splash screen of "Windows XP loading" with blue bar. It would take a couple of restarts, but it would finally load. Unfortunately, one time it never loaded. It just stayed at that screen.

I did a system recovery and that worked for a while, but it went back to the original problem. I assumed something was amiss with my programs, so I did a full on destructive recovery on the user partition. The recovery works, but when it tells me to restart it gets stuck on the loading screen again.

I'm at wits end on this and I can't figure it out. I am going to get a new computer in about a month, but I do want to figure out what the hell is going on in case this happens again.

My computer is a HP Media center PC. It's about 4-5 years old.

PaperPritt

My computer is a HP Media center PC

This is what happens to your computer. An horribly cluttered OS with lots of dysfunctionial malware apps all over the place.

Step 1: buy a windows XP or vista disk (any OEM will do)
Step 2: fully format your disk
Step 3: reinstall from the XP or vista disk.

Step 99: never, ever install anything that you don't *strictly* need. Windows is fragile enough as it is, you don't need to push it over the edge.

Enos316

Short of a reformat, you can try booting into safe mode and disabling your startup programs using msconfig. Might be something gumming up the works.

Its usually F8 or something to get the boot selection screen to come up. You should do this after the POST beep but before the Windows load screen. You should see a prompt.

When in safe mode, click start > run, then msconfig. I would initially disable all the programs listed under the startup tab. Worth a shot.

tallgeeze

Yea, when this first started happening I did my due diligence with google and did the MSconfig route. I could never pin down what it was though. I can even go into safe mode sine the recovery process has never finised. Every time I log into safe mode I get the message, "System not fully installed". Then it's back to the shit

Paper, I know it's a cluttered PC. I tried very hard to get rid of that junk when I first got it, but you can't get it all I suppose. I won't bother with buying another disk since I'm gonna get a new computer anyway. I just don't want to wait another month to do stuff PC wise.

I just got back my home internet connection. This is really a kick to the nuts timing wise.

Tofystedeth

tallgeeze wrote: »

Hello all

Lately I had had annoying trouble with my windows XP starting up. For the past couple of months when I turn on my computer it would sometimes get stuck on the splash screen of "Windows XP loading" with blue bar. It would take a couple of restarts, but it would finally load. Unfortunately, one time it never loaded. It just stayed at that screen.

I did a system recovery and that worked for a while, but it went back to the original problem. I assumed something was amiss with my programs, so I did a full on destructive recovery on the user partition. The recovery works, but when it tells me to restart it gets stuck on the loading screen again.

I'm at wits end on this and I can't figure it out. I am going to get a new computer in about a month, but I do want to figure out what the hell is going on in case this happens again.

My computer is a HP Media center PC. It's about 4-5 years old.

By destructive recovery you mean what exactly? A system restore? Repair install? Or did you format and reinstall? If you're still have trouble at that point it could be a hardware issue. Just last night when I swapped my PSU and video card I accidentally plugged both a IDE HDD power plug and SATA connector into my SATA HD instead of putting that second IDE plug into my DVD drive. Windows refused to boot normally or safely. Getting the power thing right straightened it out.

Also, when you restart are you booting to the CD again or trying to load Windows. I have in the past had trouble with that reset phase, but I forget how exactly I cleared it up.

tallgeeze

I did a repair install the first time. The repair install doesn't delete any of my files. That worked once, but the problem came up again. After backing up some choice files I did the destructive recovery which DOES delete my files. I did both of these from the recovery CDs and from the recovery partition on my hard drive. Neither of them worked

I did have to replace my PSU last year around september-october. Man, if it's that simple I'm gonna scream to the heavens.

At least that gives me something to look at when I get home.

mts

same thing happened to my old laptop. i think its a a motherboard issue or some connection is bad. since i was able to get things moving by thumping the bottom of my computer

tallgeeze

I guess I need to go over my connections. Is there some rule of thumb regarding connections? there are a lot of plugs and such in that machine.

Looks like it's gonna be a trial and error weekend.

Ruckus

Sounds more like your harddrive is dying to me. When you did the destructive recovery did you delete and recreate the partition or did you just format the existing partition?

tallgeeze

I formatted the existing user partition.

mts

you should download the ultimate boot cd. it has a bunch of diagnostic tools that run before anything starts and it has a lot of Hard disk checkers

Creepy

You know, it sounds retarded but you can always try opening the thing up, blowing everything off with a can of air really well and disconnecting and reconnecting EVERYTHING in order to make sure all the connections are good.

If you want to be a good troubleshooter then you pull everything out at once and keeping adding one thing, trying to boot and if it boots w/o error then you eliminate that part as bad and try the next part. It can take awhile but you'll eventually narrow it down.

The halfassed 1st method has saved me more than a couple of times. Stuff just gets dirty and loose.

tallgeeze

Creepy wrote: »

You know, it sounds retarded but you can always try opening the thing up, blowing everything off with a can of air really well and disconnecting and reconnecting EVERYTHING in order to make sure all the connections are good.

If you want to be a good troubleshooter then you pull everything out at once and keeping adding one thing, trying to boot and if it boots w/o error then you eliminate that part as bad and try the next part. It can take awhile but you'll eventually narrow it down.

The halfassed 1st method has saved me more than a couple of times. Stuff just gets dirty and loose.

did that a long time ago.

I took the advice from above and checked over my connections. I guess I had a strip of connecters attached to too many different devices. I got it all sorted out. I type this from my home computer. Thx H/A.

I love it when a thread comes together.

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