Can't boot up XP after system crash

[Ben Foster]

My friend was playin on Max Payne 2 when his system crashed, so he did a
restart. Problem is now his computer will not boot up at all! He says he's
tried everything he can think of: Booting into safe mode, restoring to the
last known good configuration etc. I suggested trying the recovery console,
so he's gonna let me know when he's tried that. But does anyone have any
ideas what could be the problem, and how to solve it?

His PC Specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+
512 DDR-Ram (I think)
40gb Hard Drive
Running On XP Home Edition

Any Ideas?
Many Thanks,
Ben Foster

 

[Ron Martell]

My friend was playin on Max Payne 2 when his system crashed, so he did a
restart. Problem is now his computer will not boot up at all! He says he's
tried everything he can think of: Booting into safe mode, restoring to the
last known good configuration etc. I suggested trying the recovery console,
so he's gonna let me know when he's tried that. But does anyone have any
ideas what could be the problem, and how to solve it?

His PC Specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+
512 DDR-Ram (I think)
40gb Hard Drive
Running On XP Home Edition

Any Ideas?
Many Thanks,
Ben Foster

What happens when he does try to boot up? Is there an error message
that comes up? If so then we need to have the complete *verbatim*
text of that message.

As a last resort you could try a Repair Install as per the
instructions at http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

A repair install will preserve the installed applications, user data
files, and configuration settings. However Windows Updates will all
have to be installed again.

WARNING!!!!!!!!
If you do a repair install then do not repeat do not connect the
computer to the Internet until you are certain that a firewall is in
place and functioning. Otherwise the computer will be almost
instantaneously infected with a virus or viruses such as Sasser,
Blaster, etc.

But if there is an error message when you try to boot the computer
then that should be checked out before doing the repair install
because it may well point to the exact actual cause. And if it is a
hardware related fault then the repair install is not going to do any
good.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Ben Foster]

Thanks for the advice, but he's managed to do it himself. There was a blue
screen with information on it everytime he booted up, but it was gone before
you can read it. Anyways he put his hard disk into his sisters pc, did a
CHKDISK off that to fix the errors and its working again now.

Thanks Anyways,
Ben Foster