cannot boot XP; safe mode gives blue screen with just a question mark

Dell Dimension E510
XP media edition - SP2

PC won't boot, just hangs at logo screen. When trying to boot into safe mode (with or without cmd prompt) I get a blue screen (NOT a BSOD) with a weird looking, non-working prompt, and a question mark.

I just spent a couple hours cleaning this thing of trojan.generic, winlogon86 and some rogue.antispyware.antivirus, with a combo of AVG and Malewarebytes. Computer appeared clean and was running good. I then performed some windows updates. During all this, I rebooted the computer several times.

Then, 2 things before last reboot: [1] set page file back to 'system managed size' (it was set at custom and much larger than recommended), and [2] let windows update install 'office xp service pack 3'.

Now I'm stuck with this. I performed the Dell Diagnostic scan for "system won't boot" from the F12 boot menu. All tests passed.

Does this have to do with changing the page file size, with the office xp sp3 update, or could this still be a leftover from all the malware that was on this machine?

More importantly however... how do I fix this? I have an XP pro CD that does not have a recovery section on it(?), but I do have another hdd with existing OS (xp pro) laying around that I could pop in.

 

Update: I now have an XP pro CD with Recovery console on it.

 

Please try the following ...

Start the Recovery Console using a Windows XP CD (or an XP Recovery Console .ISO image that has been burned to CD).

• Insert the CD in the computer's optical disk drive tray.
• Start or re-start the computer so that it boots from the CD. You may be prompted to "Press any key". (If the system does not appear to be booting from the CD, you may need to enter the BIOS Setup Menu and change the boot order, so that the CD-ROM/optical disk drive is set to boot before the hard disk drive.)
• When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press the R key on your keyboard to start the Recovery Console.
• The Recovery Console will ask which Windows installation you would like to log on to. If you have multiple Windows installations, it will list each one, and you would type the number associated with the installation you would like to work on and press the <ENTER> key. If you have just one Windows installation, type 1 and press <ENTER>.
• You will be prompted for the Administrator's password. If there is no password, (and this is most likely), simply press <ENTER>.
• You will be presented with a C:\Windows> prompt. (Please advise if you are not seeing a C:\WINDOWS> prompt.)

At the C:\Windows> prompt, type chkdsk /p and press <ENTER> (Note: There is a space between "chkdsk" and "/p")

• This test will take some time to run and at times may appear stalled but just let it run.
• If any errors are found/repairs made, run chkdsk /p again, and repeat if necessary.

Type "exit" at the prompt and press <ENTER> to close the Recovery Console and restart your system.

Does Windows start normally now?

 

Hello, AustrAlien, and thanks for your reply. I have since given up and completely reinstalled xp.

But to answer your question, no that didn't work. The only thing that gave me different results was the copying of 'software', 'sam' etc. from windows\repair to windows\system32\config. I then got an actual BSOD screen with error 0x7E in safe mode, but never in normal mode. That always just sat there showing the logo and progress bar.

Oh well. This is the first XP screw up I couldn't fix. :-( I think the excessive malware infection may have contributed to this.

 

That seems like it was the best move. Glad to know all is now well.
Best wishes
'Alien