Computer won't boot up all the way....... keeps crashing at the Windows XP screen

[True Colors]

Hello there. I have a 7 year old Dell Dimension 2400 computer. It has Windows XP(32 bit) with 4 gigs of ram.

Recently I have installed several new software programs. Mostly utility applications and stuff to play video files. Things of that nature.

My computer froze up yesterday when I had a few applications running. I let it sit there for a while and it never unlocked itself and would not respond to anything I typed on the keyboard. I turned the power off and then turned it back on.

When I turn the power on it starts up the boot process. It displays the manufacturer information, then it goes to the Windows page, then I get a green screen of death, then it goes to a black screen with white text telling me that my system has crashed and asking me if I want to start up in safe mode or regular mode, etc. I have tried safe and regular but neither one will boot up beyond the Windows XP screen.

Any ideas on how I can resolve this? Do I need to create a CD boot disk and try to use that to load Windows properly?

Thank you so much in advance.

TC

 

[LA1]

it sounds like a virus or more. Usually my rule is if it dosen't start in safe mode it is usually better time spent trying to recover data to do a wipe and reload.

 

[mikesx4911]

yup, I agree +1 Wipe and reload.

 

[Slaymate]

What types of utility programs did you install?

Do you have a Windows XP Installation CD? If you do, you should try to Repair the Installation 1st.
Go into the bios and set the CDRom as the 1st Boot Device (if you don't have a XP CD then the setup may be on a separate partition of your Hard Drive, maybe D: ?)

Save and Exit from the bios, PC should restart
Follow the on-screen instructions as they appear. You'll get a screen asking if you want to repair your system using the recovery consule. Skip This. That is not the repair we want. Continue on, a screen should soon appear telling you something like this.

Setup has found an existing version of Windows installed. Would you like to continue with the installation. It should have the option to Continue - or - Repair the existing installation
Select - Repair the existing installation
Sit back and correctly answer all the options given

 

[supawiz6991]

Ive never heard of a green screen of death? is your color settings correct? I think it is suposed to be blue but in any case what is the error message on the screen of death?? also is there a hex error code? (looks like this 0x0000000000 there will be several of them i need jsut the first one.