Xp reboot loop...

[dafydd_brown]

There I was minding my own business playing on Freelancer with Firefox and Windows Media Player running in the background and suddenly I get the old blue screen of death.

So I sat there expecting to get the usual blurb but instead the screen just stays blue so I decided to hit the reset button. It began to load up as normal and got to the point where it tells you that Windows didn't close properly the last time and offers you the options to start in safe mode etc. I chose to start as normal and so the boot-up procedure continued and I got to the main black 'Xp load screen' with the moving bar... where it then decides to reboot.

At the moment it keeps rebooting whenever I get to that Xp load screen no matter what option I pick: 'Safe mode, normal mode etc...'

Anyone got any suggestions? I really would like to not have to re-install Windows... everyone knows how much it is to lose everything on you hard-drive.

I'm running XP home edition on a AMD 64 3200, 1GB RAM not sure about motherboard... Radeon 9800 pro GFX card.

 

[Willeh]

Try booting from windows XP cd or try using the repair feature in windows CD

 

[dafydd_brown]

Ahem... what if I don't have the Windows disk?
It's times like these when I wished I stopped talking about the "one day" when I'll start using Linux and actually started using Linux.
Then again I could've just bought Windows to begin with... or PC World could've given me the disks... but that was a long time ago now and I've got barely anything left of that original system. Also I hate PC World.

 

[__Camouflage__]

Check your CPU fan, see if it's spinning while your computer is turned on, I had this problem, and come to find out it was my fan, it burnt out. If you have onboard video, take out your video card and use the onboard video, could be the video card (bad drivers).

 

[dafydd_brown]

CPU fan is running fine... noisy as ever but fine.
There's nothing wrong with the video card drivers I updated them recently and that wouldn't cause Windows to stop loading would it? Aside from that, my motherboard doesn't have an onboard port for my monitor so I'm assuming that it doesn't have onboard video.
I think I'm going to have to get hold of a copy of Xp and try to do a repair. Anyone know if it'll cause me problems trying to run a repair from a copy of Xp that wasn't used for installation?
Any other ideas in the meantime?
Thanks guys, I appreciate your help.

 

[__Camouflage__]

It would giving bad commands and if you have Automatic reboot enabled when the computer crashes, it will reboot it, turn off that feature by pressing F8, or it's in your BIOS, mine has both so I can't be too sure. And you CPU might be overheating due to a bad fan, if it's really noisey it could be going out and not giving enough cooling to your CPU.

 

[EricB]

try getting an erd commander 2005 cd and load it and do a system restore

 

[dafydd_brown]

Right, well when I get home later I'll disable the auto reboot function and see what happens. I'm assuming I'll at least get to see some kind of error message this way?
I'll also check to see what kind of temperature the CPU is getting up to... I had been using it for a while yesterday but then I do most days and had left it alone for a while whilst using my housemate's PC for Tech Forums research.
I don't think I'm going to be able to get hold of an erd commander 2005 cd from any of my friends... but I should be able to get a copy of Xp. Is that just as good or is it likely to cause problems becuase of the differing serial numbers between CD and HD? Also am I likely to lose data this way?
If the worst comes to the worst then I might just have to put the troublesome HD in my friends PC, transfer all the important stuff and then reinstall. That's something I shall be avoiding for as long as possible though.

 

[dafydd_brown]

Okay well I'm not sure if I was going to have problems fixing this problem without a legit copy of Xp... so I've bought one... even though it's made me feel a little dirty.
I'm going to have a look at Knoppix just in case something like this happens again and just to see how well it works. It's a Linux bootable CD that runs entirely from the CD and sounds quite interesting.
I'm planning a hardware update as soon as I can afford it so it was about time I got a copy of Xp of my own... I just hope this fixes the problem. In the meantime I'm going to have to transfer the files I need from the HD that's due for an appointment with Lacuna Inc.

 

[dafydd_brown]

Should it be helpful to anyone else, hereÂ’s how IÂ’ve resolved my problem:
I went ahead and ordered a copy of Xp but in the end I didn't need it... whilst plugging my c:\ HD into my friendÂ’s computer and getting ready for an hour or so of file swapping between that HD and my other one in preparation for formatting and reinstallation a wonderful thing happened.
As my friend's PC began to load his coy of Windows it recognised my HD, noticed that it contained errors, ran a scandisk and then corrected them. Sceptical as I am I thought I'd now try it in my PC and bob's your uncle it loaded up! That was last night and it seems to have been running as well as usual since then with 4 or so complete shut-downs and start-ups (I still crossed my fingers everytime!)
I know one or two people had similar problems recently and it might be worth trying to fix them the same way as I did... unless some of you more knowledgeable types think it's a bad idea. In any case my problem is fixed for now but I'm definitely going to start trying out get my head round some of the more idiot-friendly versions of Linux.
Thanks for all your suggestions!