XP Automatic Recovery?

Hello my friends,

Have a sony vaio xp home not sure which sp...when I a start this thing it goes into Automatic Recovery Screen. Well that would be fine and all but thats about it. If I try to go into safe mode, no good system looks as if it will boot but, no it restarts and goes back into Automatic Recovery Screen. This happens for all options. Here's the messege "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this." Any ideas??

This machine does not belong to me and the owner is not sure how it happend.

 

First of all go to Control Panel/System Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery/Settings and uncheck Automically Restart.

 

I think you missed the fact he can't boot into XP to do what you're suggesting.

 

Whoops,sorry about that, have you attempted to do a Repair

 

These might help you...

http://www.digitalwebcast.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307545

Courtesy of 'TheDoug' in this thread:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=44140

 

I will try all of the options presented to me on Monday.
Thanks again and I'll keep you posted.
MPC458

 

Well when I get down to the copy c:\windows\repair.....
I get The system cannot find the file specified.

What does this mean? Why would the file be missing?

 

Well, either your 'repair' folder is not present, or some of the files are missing from it. Neither one is a good thing. See if you can navigate to the folder in the repair console to verify the folder is still there. If it is, look inside it to see what files remain. Let us know what you find.

 

Sorry but I already reintalled the OS...Well I'm in the process of it anyway.
Thanks for all the help. Will let you know what happens in the end.
MPC458