My computer is now stuck in a rebooting loop~

[BentoBox]

My computer had been experiencing some trouble lately; notably some registry values changing randomly from time to time (I had a program who warned me of such changes). It started to crash in a very odd way too just about a week ago: The screen would turn black and strides of blue would cover the screen:

And such crashes wouldn't be initiated by any reckless behavior on my end, it would happen randomly (i.e. browsing the web, working on an excel sheet...)
I thought it might've been related to my GPU (integrated) but I just brushed it off as restarting the computer would "fix" the problem.

I went to my parent's this weekend and left my computer on... When coming back, my computer had just rebooted and I figured it must've been a forced reboot from a windows update... but it froze on the loading screen right before the login screen. Rebooted once, froze at the same point. Rebooted a second time and this light blue screen came up; some files had apparently been corrupted and it was going to attempt to fix the problem, and so it scanned my Hard Drive and retrieved the "orphan" files. My comp was working again. But it was noticeably slower, some shortcuts did not lead to their assigned file, all the addons on my FireFox had been uninstalled... I downloaded a registry cleaner tool (Euser registry cleaner) and let it do its thing. Everything was fine from then onwards...

Till yesterday when it crashed on me, again, while I was working on a research project (ms word).

Same black&blue screen.

And so I rebooted my comp, hoping for another miraculous save but I wasn't so lucky this time around.

Chassis intruded!
Fatal Error... System Halted.

I have no idea what that means. What chassis?

Then came the screen where it asks you in which mode you'd want to boot windows (safe mode, sm w/ network, sm w/ command prompt, last known good config, start windows normally), and every single option brought me back to that very same screen. I am caught in a loop. Having lost my legit XP cd (disk 1 of 2 actually), I dwled XP and burnt the iso on a DVD (bad I know, but that's not the point) and tried to boot from said DVD but it wouldn't recognize it... The disk would spin in the tray and then... nothing. The computer would just reboot and ask me again in which mode I'd like to boot windows... I pressed del after rebooting and made my disk drive the only drive from which my computer could boot from... but it then asked me to actually insert a disk even though there already was one in the tray...

Would anyone happen to know just wth happened to my computer? =[ Could it be a virus? And at this point, if my computer refuses to boot from the disk drive... what options do I have left...?

 

[KSoD]

Okay so do you have the system set to boot from the Optical Drive first so that it can boot to the CD? If so then the copy you got may not work that way. It may not be bootable.

But from the sounds of it the system is fully corrupted and only fix will be to format and reinstall.

 

[BentoBox]

Yeah, I went in the BIOS utility and removed all other boot peripherals aside from the DVD driver and it still wouldn't read my disk. Is the fact that I burnt the ISO on a DVD a problem? Should I have used a CD instead? Also, I forgot to mention that I burnt the iso on a computer @ my university and I tried burning it using iso-burner, BurnCDCC, CDBurnerXP... I even tried real player and neither of these programs would actually detect the burner. There was this one program installed on the computer called Roxis and it was the only program that would actually detect it and burn successfully~ I don't know if any of that is relevant to the problem at hand... but I'd like to know if there is something specific that needs to be done for a burnt CD to be bootable or if they all should be? And if my disk drivers were damaged somehow, is there another way to actually force a reinstall?

 

[carnageX]

Use ImgBurn to burn the ISO to a disc; see if it works.

 

[BentoBox]

Ok, so burning the iso on a CD did work and my disk drive was able to detect it, joy. So the windows installation fires up, it starts loading all the necessary DLLs and whatnot... and after all of that is done, it freezes upon "loading windows setup" or something along those lines.... I am then being told that, and I quote:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer supplied diagnostic or setup program.

Setup cannot continue. To quit Setup, press F3."

...

Went to my BIOS and the HD was indeed detected... Opened the case and the connection were fine, obviously. So what now?

 

[KSoD]

Windows XP does not come with SATA Drivers. You will need to use nlite to slipstream your SATA Driver for your motherboard onto the install disk.

You can also use a floppy or possibly a USB Thumb Drive to get the drivers on there as well.

 

[carnageX]

Is your HDD a SATA drive? If it is, it may not be detecting a HDD because you need to load your SATA drivers during setup.

Edit: Mak beat me to it.

 

[BentoBox]

Windows XP does not come with SATA Drivers. You will need to use nlite to slipstream your SATA Driver for your motherboard onto the install disk.

You can also use a floppy or possibly a USB Thumb Drive to get the drivers on there as well.

nLite will allow me to burn the necessary drivers onto my windows disk? Or am I misunderstanding you?

And if I did load my motherboard's SATA drivers onto a usb key, would the windows set up process actually look into the usb key for said drivers?

I read somewhere that I could press F6 during the installation and it would allow me to enter any disk if I needed to load some drivers. I still do have my mobo's disk so would that be a viable way of getting my drivers in there?

 

[KSoD]

Yes you would have to press F6 to get the startup to give you access to direct it to the location of the USB Drive to get the drivers needed.

nlite will allow you to create a bootable ISO which you then burn and can use.

 

[Hampton]

Yes CD ISO's don't like to be burned onto a DVD, nLite will allow you to slipstream sevice pack 3 as well as other updates this should solve your SATA drive problem, is this an older machine? or is your SATA drive new? if not it should be able to detect your SATA drive as long as your ISO is SP2 or later. I don't even use IDE drives anymore, I have installed XP with SP2 and with SP3 on my SATA drive with out problem, but it should work as long as you have used that drive on that machine before or unless your system or ISO is really old.