Just wondering if anybody had any suggestions on the below:-
My PC at home has stopped booting up Win XP.
It shows the bios info on screen, checks floppy and then CD for boot as normal, but then I get screen saying:-
"We apologise for any inconvenience but Windows has not started properly. This may be because of a recent hardware or software change"
It then gives options to 'start as normal', 'in safe mode, 'in safe mode with networking or command prompt', or 'with last known good configuration'.
None of which do anything.
'Start as normal' freezes.
'Safe mode' executes a list of windows/system32/ commands, then stops.
'Last good config' just re-starts and does the above all over again.
Does anyone have any ideas on the problem and fix? HDD failure?
Coincidentally I have a brand new HDD I intended to install as a second one, but havent as yet. Is the best (only?) thing to do to install windows on that, then see what is salvageable off the old drive?
Press F8 when its starting and then from the list select "Disable Automatic Restart On System Failure".
Note down the error on the blue screen that comes up then get back to us.
Probably a repair install will get you up and running but youll want to do a Memtest and HDDReg test to try and work out why it happened in the first place.
do you have a windows cd? if so just repair the windows operating system..
1.boot of cd:
2.let it go through all its loading stages
3.hit install xp and accept license
4. hit r for repairing the windows operating system
this fixes most problems if you don't wanna do any research and just do a quick fix, you will have to reinstall any service packs and i would recommend either re-installing your hardware drivers or just update to the newest version.....
You said that when booting into safe mode, it runs a list of commands on the screen then freezes. Does it always get to the same command when it freezes? If it does, its a possible corruption to that file, and a Non-destructive system reinstall might fix the problem. That might be curing the symptoms and not the cause of the issue though, such as a power supply under/over wattage.
If it freezes at different files then its almost certainly a hardware issue not a software issue. Something is not allowing the computer to continue booting. (I once had a processer where the computer store didnt put enough thermal grease between the CPU and the Heatsink. Within about 10 seconds of turning the computer on, the CPU was overheating and froze. Simply putting more thermal grease and tightening the heatsink made the computer run as good as new.)
Quote from LordFury;326648: You said that when booting into safe mode, it runs a list of commands on the screen then freezes. Does it always get to the same command when it freezes? If it does, its a possible corruption to that file, and a Non-destructive system reinstall might fix the problem. That might be curing the symptoms and not the cause of the issue though, such as a power supply under/over wattage.
If it freezes at different files then its almost certainly a hardware issue not a software issue. Something is not allowing the computer to continue booting. (I once had a processer where the computer store didnt put enough thermal grease between the CPU and the Heatsink. Within about 10 seconds of turning the computer on, the CPU was overheating and froze. Simply putting more thermal grease and tightening the heatsink made the computer run as good as new.)
Sometimes a crapped out window install will halt at the same file everytime too. Best bet is to repair install first then start running some hardware tests.
but yeah, its possible not a software issue, but thats the most likely cause in my opinion... Windows has a tendancy to corrupt files if something it doesnt like, happens at the wrong time.