Unable To Boot Into XP Pro

I hope this is in the right section but I have a problem that can be fixed by reformatting the hard drive but hoping that is not the option here.

I have a laptop that I use most days. It is a Latitude D400 and uses Windows XP Professional SP3. When I bought the laptop it had been enhanced, 2gb RAM, 250gb HD, 1.6ghz Processor, etc. Most days everything works fine and I've split the HD just in case of any crashes and all my important documents are on a seperate drive. This morning when booting up after the Dell screen I just get a black screen and thats it. There's no cursor but just a black screen on its own.

In case anyone is wondering I have tried the following:

1. I went into Safe Mode and when I click on the name of the operating system to boot into nothing happens.
2. I tried the Recovery Console and swapped the main system files but to no avail.

I have an external CD Drive so I can use that to try anything if needed but this has totally baffled me. Can anyone help? If I've missed anything out I'll be more than happy to help out. As I said before I don't really want to reformat the main hard drive again.

 

Hi,

That is a strange situation in that the Dell screen shows and you don't even get the XP splash/loading screen which is also in low resolution. So your video card is working and XP hasn't loaded enough to change resolution to something out of range of the display.

Your screen goes completely black not even a blinking cursor in the upper left?

In recovery console use the command: type c:\boot.ini and let us know what it shows.

EDIT: Have you try Last Known Good Configuration from the Safe Mode options screen?

 

Thank you for the advice, I did try the Last Good Configuration and just got the black screen again with no cursor. When I typed in "type c:\boot.ini" in the Recovery Console this is what I got back.

[boot.loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)
partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating system]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/noexecute=opt in /fastdetect

I hope that helps.

 

That looks good.

Safe Mode with Command Prompt also goes to a blank screen?

Are you getting to Recovery Console from a CD?

 

I'm using the Recovery Console from a Windows XP Pro CD in an external CD Drive.

When I select Safe Mode With Command Prompt, it asks me which operating system to use and when I select XP Pro nothing happens, it is as though it's frozen and I have to turn off the laptop.

 

What are the choices of Operating Systems and what does the screen look like? (Your boot.ini only shows one choice so usually you wouldn't see a screen asking you to choose.)

Also, does the laptop do the same thing when you have no USB devices attached? Nothing in the card reader if applicable.

 

The prompt asks me to select the operating system to start then press enter. There is only one operating system anyway and when I press enter there is no response.

The laptop does behave the same whether there is a USB device or not. I only connected the CD drive after the problems started.

 

I'm stumped for the moment. I've never seen a completely blank screen with no error message--it doesn't give a whole lot to work with. I'll do a little searching and see if anything seems applicable.

One last question which I think will be yes. In Recovery Console does dir C: command return results including NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM?

I hope someone will jump in to this thread with any ideas.

 

Thank you for your help as it's been much appreciated. None of those files you mentioned were on drive C. The nearest to those was a file called ntdtcsetup.log.

 

Those files are necessary but it would be odd for them to have just disappeared. Do the dir C: again and see which of the below list you have and anything else with .com or .sys in the name.

In your first post you said you "swapped" system files. What exactly was that?

 

It didn't help I was looking in the wrong directory. :-o

Ntldr - Yes
Boot.ini - Yes
Ntdetect.com - Yes
Pagefile.sys - No

I copied the system files from the repair folder using the Recovery Console. The Default, System, Sam, Security files from my memory.

 

I was wondering how you got into recovery console without those files. Pagefile.sys does not show in RC by design so that is OK.

I am back to being stumped. I'll post back if I get any bright ideas. I'll just add (for anyone reading) that because you get boot choices in Safe Mode (although only one which is correct for your setup) that XP must be getting as far a ntldr and then boot.ini before stopping. I don't know why there is nothing on the screen.