Pulling My Hair out! Help with winxp

[Jeddy]

Arrrrrg!

I shall give you the full story if it may help any.

2 weeks ago, i played at a Lan Party, and I had an unfortunate event where a malicious little b4stard pulled my pc out of the mains, since then, I have been playing on it fine, but bootup and login times have steadily increased, until today where I turn on my pc, posts then goes to the windows "boot" screen (Black with logo and scrollbar), and the hdd activity light goes off, and the system just sits there, I have left it for 30mins with no success.

Furthering my annoyance, it refuses to boot up using the winxp repair disk, it simply refuses to let me boot from it, instantly going to the "sorry but windows did not start successfully" screen, where i have tried safe mode, but after the lines of text come down, it again sits there, doing nothing.

I am really really really annoyed now, as the pc was a gift, and not only has it been abused at the lan, but it now refuses to boot up into windows. I also have no way to wipe my hdd, as i cannot use the windows cd. I am pretty sure it is not an error, or the post wouldent go through correctly.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[AdamR79]

It's most likely your HDD im afraid, they really dont like just being switched off, especially when they are in the middle of something... Stop using it (unplug it) (if you want to be able to get your data off it) and get a new one to test with.

 

[Jeddy]

re

Thanks mate, i will try my old pc's IDE hard drive later.

If this has been caused by the switching off of the PC at the lan, heads WILL be rolling and the 6hr one later this evening. I cannot belive that someone would just go and unplug a £850+ pc at a LAN "for a larf" as it were.

Hmmm, I am now uber

ed off.

 

[Toxcity]

Well, if the harddrive was the problem then while loading windows it would Blue Screen.

When booting to Cd have you told it to boot from a CD or just left it was a CD in the drive?

 

[AdamR79]

Well, if the harddrive was the problem then while loading windows it would Blue Screen.

When booting to Cd have you told it to boot from a CD or just left it was a CD in the drive?

I have to disagree sorry

Sorry but while this is possible, it is certainly not always the case... and more often than not I would say it doesnt blue screen, just hangs. It really depends on the HDD problem though imo, i.e. contantly retrying and not giving up, or 3 retries and giving an error, or hdd powering off after detecting a head issue..

 

[kendo]

A bit long winded but hopefully of use. These are the questions/steps I'd take in your shoes.

Is your system spec in your profile up to date? (web searches with the right detail can help)

You say it won't boot with the XP CD. Not even the recovery console so you can consider checking/fixing the boot.ini / Master Boot Record?

You can't get into safe mode to check msconfig settings?

Did you or someone else plug it straight back in, if so can you recall what happened?

I take it you've tried all of the following:

Clear CMOS/battery out and back in, load defaults, checked the BIOS version (consider flashing if older versions don't support your latest kit).

Reloaded SATA drivers if required

Checked your BIOS settings for what should happen after a power failure.

Not got a card in a card reader, usb devices unplugged if not required.

Unplugged all non essential internal items so you just have a basic setup loading (using one good ram module if you have to). Eliminated the remaining items one by one if still no boot (borrow the joker's PC for the parts)

If you can get hold of an HD with an OS to boot from and run diagnostics on, great. Or just plug yours into another PC and run them from there.

 

[Jeddy]

Fixed!

well i have fixed it lads.

Unfortunately, the windows install was corrupt so i had to format the disk. Not too bigger issue anyways, as i had a load of random crap on there anyway.

Just installed my mobo drivers, updates etc. and latest forceware. Sound card is next.

Lukily there was no hardware damage as such.

Hopefully be back up and running for lan party @ 6.00 gmt tonight.

 

[Rastalovich]

Darn, sorry I didn`t see this earlier.

If the HDD was physically ok, u could have chkdsk`d it as a slave to another drive, and it would probably have been fine.

>.<

 

[Toxcity]

As I said.. I think it will almost always blue screen if the drive is physically dying/dead.

 

[Rastalovich]

As I said.. I think it will almost always blue screen if the drive is physically dying/dead.

Filesystem error will do it too m8.

It`ll often lie to u tho and give u some silly reason.

Usually if it`s a filesystem BSOD in these cases, it`ll happen either whilst that progression bar/animation is moving during windows boot or just after.

Doesn`t always help to kick the pc, but it can be satisfying

 

[Toxcity]

Filesystem error will do it too m8.

It`ll often lie to u tho and give u some silly reason.

Usually if it`s a filesystem BSOD in these cases, it`ll happen either whilst that progression bar/animation is moving during windows boot or just after.

Doesn`t always help to kick the pc, but it can be satisfying

As you said Mr Rast a good old chkdsk /r would work a treat at fixing any filesystem errors/corruption.

 

[Phoenix]

If there's ever suspicion of HDD failure, SpinRite is the first program to turn to.

 

[AdamR79]

agreed, spinrite has performed some miracle on my customers hard drives countless times