Help needed please! windows wont boot

Hi all, i am in need of a lil help.

My PC will not boot into windows. Here's what happened, ive been using pc all day then notice it lagging when opening a mp4 video in QT. so i tried to open task manager to close QT and it gave me an error. I then tried Ctrl Alt Del and same weird error. so i went to reboot. Now i get this:

Every time I boot, the green bar scrolls across the screen thinks for a lil while, the mouse cursor shows up and for a split second i can move the mouse, but then the PC reboots. Upon rebooting, my system fails to detect that there is a raid. and ofc goes through the motions of booting but fails to find the OS. (This does not find the raid thing has happened before and usually i just reboot and its all ok) But now when i reboot the whole thing just repeats it self.

I have done 3 window repairs which tried 2 system restores and on the 3rd one it says it cannot do anything else.

I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable and safe user. I run and do weekly scans of kaspersky AV, spybot S+D, maywarebytes anti malware, superantispyware

Hardware:
Q6600
Abit IP35 pro
4x 1gb Gskill HZ 6400


Now i do have my CPU overclocked so I have put it back to stock speed of 2.66ghz. But im not sure what the stock voltage is for the CPU (maybe its getting too hot - unlikely but ill try) so i've put voltage down to 1.25. I still get the same process repeating. I've also tried booting into safe mode with the same results.

My next suspicion is the raid is at fault i really really hope it isnt... any ideas what to do next or what to check?

any help is much appreciated and thanks in advance.

 

If you can boot to a single hard drive without using RAID, try it. One of the main things I don't like about RAID is that if you run into problems with the RAID or with a hard drive, it can become catastrophic depending on the type of RAID you're using. If using a striped RAID (RAID 0) all your data may be lost. If using a mirrored RAID (RAID 1) then you're OK, and if you unplug all but the first hard drive and reset the RAID settings in BIOS so that the RAID is either off, or disabled, or set to IDE mode or PATA mode (it's different in different BIOS's) then try to boot to a single drive, that may pinpoint the issue. If using RAID 0 (striped) you may need to rebuild the array. Some built-in RAID configurators offer this option, many don't. It depends on your motherboard. And some of the rebuilds are safe or have a data safe option, others are destructive. Do your research before attempting to rebuild the RAID to make sure if it's destructive or not because you may not be warned during the actual process. But, you may want to run an in depth diagnostic on your hard drives first; you can download the diagnostic programs for free from your hard drive maker's web site. You should also try running chkdsk from the recovery console; boot to your Windows CD, enter the recovery console. When you're at the command prompt, type in chkdsk C: /r and press Enter. There's a space before and after the C: in the command. Running chkdsk can take a long time, like a really long time, so be patient. You may see the percentage counter appear to freeze, you may see it go backwards but do not worry, these are normal happenings. The PC may appear to be frozen and after 4 hours of it sitting at 53% you might think it is frozen and locked up, it is NOT so be patient and let it run it's course. Rebooting a PC during a full chkdsk is a really bad idea. Anyway- try these things and let us know how it goes.
Good luck!

 

hi there,

progress so far:

1.) Tried several system restore points from 3 -15 days old
2.) tried restoring fail safe options in bios
3.)disconnected all USB devices except mouse (i did notice before my USB controller and something else was on the same IRQ which slowed down USB data transfer but i fixed this) anyways the fail safe option in bios eliminated the IRQ as a possible fault i believe as a lot less things showed up in IRQ when i booted up.
4.) 5 windows repairs by booting up on CD
5.) after windows repair there is option to open CMD prompt which i did. I CAN!! browse my entire raid 0 stripe. Which suggests the raid is still active. So i connected my USB HD, and copied 3-4gb of data across to back it up (PHEW). Now the data copied across all works fine. which suggests the raid is in one piece... and places the blame soley on windows? unless that part of the windows loading bit is corrupt on the HD...

6.) I am now trying to do a chkdsk /r and will update on the status in a while.

thanks for the reply dlb, much appreciated, will report back soon!

Fegis!


ps. IF the chkdsk comes back ok.. i guess i have 2 options. My HDD set up is 2 x 500gb in raid 0. 1x 500gb on its own as back up. So i can:

a.) install windows vista on the sole 500gb boot in grab teh rest of the stuff off my raid 0 and dismantle it.

b.) install windows vista over top of the existing installation on the raid, hoping it wont format all my data.

I am leaning towards A.) as it seems the safer option and i wanna get rid of raid lol anyways back after chkdsk!! ty again!

 

ok chkdsk /f is complete on C: (the raid 0)

no bad sectors
a few orphaned files 2-3
it found some extra space in the MFT and right at the end it says
windows has made corrections to the file system.

rebooting to test

 

chkdsk fixed it i am into windows WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

there isnt a big enough smiley!!!

well time to invest into soem ghosting / backup software lol