Windows XP Pro Won't Boot Up

Howdy:wave ... well sir ... I have this desktop HP pavilion a360x.:crap It will not boot into windows.rolleyes I will get a menu screen asking about booting window normally ... last known good configuration ... that stuff. Tried all options, but it won't work it just goes as far as the window xp opening screen, then it reboots.:crybaby No matter what I do, it won't go into windows at all ... not even safe mode.:eek It has a western digital hhd 80GB ... and it's not full. 2GB of ram. Windows xp pro 32 bit. Any idea how to correct this situation???:confused

Thanks for reading my post.:wave

 

I think you've got three choices... or more...

1. It could be the Windows operating system is so corrupted - over time - that its various pieces can't find each other. This isn't entirely terrible, by the way - I could take this hard-drive and use a USB-connector kit and connect it to another PC and see if that other PC would "see" this drive AND if I could back up files from it.

2. It could be a virus.

3. It could be hardware - "death in the family" so to speak. If you had a dead hard-drive, you'd get a No Boot Drive Found error. So this gets my vote for 'least likely'. This drive might not be "dead" yet, too - it could be "failing" and this could be a coma-state - just before death.

IF you have another computer, then I could remove this hard drive from the HP Pav A360X and use one of those $15-20 IDE-to-USB kits and connect it to that 2nd computer and see what happens.

(I'd really want that 2nd computer to have a VERY good and up-to-date anti-virus program running so IF there's a virus involved, it might offer to 'cleanse' the attached hard drive.)

"Corrupted Windows Installation due to long usage" gets my most likely vote, by the way. A Windows Repair Process might fix this but I'm still a fan of complete-wipeout and reload because nothing runs as well as a newly-installed OS and completely re-installed programs.

BUT you must have all the original install disks!

 

Well sir:wave ... I took the hhd out of the HP and put it in another machine as the slave drive to see if I could have a tool check it out. The computer didn't see the drive ... wasn't in the BIOS either. My guess would be the hhd is bad.:cry

 

Hello...

ChristineBCW...am I correct about this?

I have always been under the assumption that a bad (or failing) hard drive could manifest itself in various ways during boot, since which information is inaccessible can vary. I picked this notion up some time ago. Basically, if something that loads late in the boot sequence (a service, etc.) cannot be read, then the "No boot drive found" warning would not appear, and the PC would "almost" or "partially" boot before crashing.

If I am right I think this could add a little more credence to the idea that the drive is worn beyond usefulness. That the drive is not found is certainly a bad sign. I guess the only thing I would want to know for sure is that power is getting to the drive when it's connected in the slave position in the alternate PC. If I had an extra drive, I would plug it in in the slave position to see if it is recognized, especially if I had files on the problem drive I would like to retrieve...

 

NO BOOT DRIVE FOUND can also be an error where the motherboard's battery is discharged and no longer maintains the BIOS table.

For this issue, I merely go into BIOS, "re-see" the drives and re-do the settings, then restart the computer. If it works, then fine - BUT all of that process had electricity applied to the motherboard. Sometimes, even a brief - even a few hours - won't re-discharge a weak motherboard battery enough. But if I come back the next day and am greeted with this same "Must re-do BIOS to function" situation, then I'm fairly assured it's a motherboard battery.

There are so many options. This post's author took - hopefully - the easiest, quickest path to discover the likely error.

In this case, he's probably got a sick and/or now-dead HDD. I really think "OS corruption over time" - ie, never defragging, constantly loading and unloading software over the years, applying updates, etc - this really fragments the file-system. All a hard-drive needs is one certain Bad Sector or Lost Cluster, and all indexing routines after that numeric point can be lost from ready-access.

But in this case, since the other computer's BIOS didn't 'see' it, that says "Pretty Much Dead".

He MIGHT try to strap it down to a castle's operating table, hoist it up in a fierce electronical storm and see if it can be brought back to life.
http://www.the-frame.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Frankenstein.jpg

Granted, this has never worked for me. My experiments are more, like, well...

http://www.e-flux.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/tumblr_lfd7l3wndq1qe0eclo1_r3_500FINAL2.jpg

 

You are my kind of creepy Christine BCW...

clap

 

Hey spirittoo, if you hav an XP disk, even the OEM and try to reinstall XP, if that doesn't work your hdd is probably bad, but I would try and format then install Windows to see if it installs and works or not. This is what I would do.

 

Well sir :wave... I tried to boot up with the xp cd ... at first it started to load files ... then after a few minutes I got a message stating a file was corrupt and windows could not be installed. I rebooted and tried it again ... this time I would only get as far as "press any key to boot from cd" ... I would do so and nothing would happen ... it just hang there. Can't format the drive because the computer doesn't see it ... when I hooked it up as a slave drive to another computer.:confused

 

Going to get a new HHD and see what happens.rolleyes