Re: Problem with booting into WinXP

Thanks for the suggestiions.

So far, the monitor, keybd and mouse all check out as working. BIOS
settings are all OK right now. After it first happened, the Boot
Sequence Order had changed so that floppy drive was first, but there
was no change after changing the order back to HD first.

Excellent suggestions about using a Linux live CD to testout the whole
system. I will get to that and all the other suggestions this weekend.
However, this seems to be more along the lines of corrupted MBR or
Boot.ini. I just don't know how to fix it.

Thanks,

BingBong

On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:10:32 -0400, Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

BingBong wrote:
Help!!

I hope someone here can help me with a problem that I am having with
my main home computer. I can't boot it.

The machine is a Core 2 Duo 6600 at 2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM. It has been
working perfectly ever since I built it. It is running WinXP sp3 with
all the current patches via CTUpdate. It has 2 HDs: a WD 320GB boot
drive and a WD 1TB storage drive.

What suddenly started happening is this: I found it with a flashing
underscore on a black screen in the upper left corner one morning. I
usually keep the machine on 24/7 and there may have been a power
failure causing a reboot overnight. This is the underscore symbol seen
after POST and BIOS check on booting that goes away when Windows
loads. Only this wont go away. There are no messages, just a black
screen with a flashing underscore. I looked at the post data and bios
data and they look fine; all drives are present and Hard Drive
Sentinal said that all drives were perfect prior to this problem
developing. Fans are all working so I doubt overheating. .

What do I do next? I'm thinking that maybe it cant find the MBR, but I
would expect some kind of error message.

Can someone please help me here???

Thanks in advance,

BingBong

Have you checked the BIOS settings ? Sometimes my boot settings
have got corrupted. (An "overclocking failure", as detected and
defined by an Asus designed motherboard, may cause the BIOS settings
to get reset - and could be instigated by a power failure. Always
verify the BIOS settings when strange stuff happens.)

As Don suggests, you can methodically test subsystems, to get a picture
of what has failed. It sounds like the BIOS is getting stuck on something.

I use:

1) Memtest86+ for testing memory.
2) Disk manufacturer test for the hard drive. (SMART failures, etc.)
3) Linux boot CD (Knoppix or Ubuntu), to verify the hardware works
with a different OS. Those two CDs won't install anything, and even
if the hard drive is broken, they should still boot from a CD drive.
Prime95 (mersenne.org) as a stress test, to check CPU stability.
4) There is always Testdisk, if you need to do some disk maintenance.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

HTH,
Paul
.

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