Continuous reboot loop

[Guest]

Had to replace motherboard in a PC and now I'm caught in a reboot loop. I
keep getting the advanced boot option menuw where your asked wheather you
want to Safe Boot, Safe Boot with Networking, etc. Which every choice I
pick, the system reboots and takes back to the same place. Any ideas on
getting past this. I would like to avoid reinstalling XP and I'm not sure
what to use or if the Recovery Console will solve my problem.

 

[R. McCarty]

You didn't mention a "To-From" hardware specs, but anyway a
repeating boot cycle is usually because the Mass Storage driver
isn't correct for the current hardware. About the only effective
way to fix it, is with a Repair install. The Mass Storage driver is
the one "Show Stopper" for migrating motherboards. The way to
get around it is before shutting down before the hardware swap
change the IDE/ATAPI driver to a "Generic" one that will work
for Intel/VIA/SiS/nVidia Chipsets. Then after booting into the
new hardware, put the vendor specific driver back in place.

 

[Guest]

I would have loved to be able to do that. The old motherboard had failed and
my wife tried to start the thing a couple of hundred times before she told me.

As for your advice of Repair Install, I'm assuming I can do that by booting
from the CD. Correct?

 

[R. McCarty]

Yes, Make sure your BIOS boot device priority is CD/DVD before
Hard drive. Insert XP disk, Press Enter when the prompt appears
"Press Any Key to boot CD-ROM". The normal setup process will
begin. There is some confusion on the options because of the use of
the term Repair install. Some folks assume that's the "R" option to get
to the Recovery Console. You just proceed through the Setup until
it gets to the option of repairing an existing install. XP will scan the
drives to locate the pre-existing instance. You should be OK, but I
would image the disk beforehand if you have software to do that.
Especially, if you and your wife both have profiles and your user
data hasn't been backed up recently.

Only locking yourself out of the house is worse than loosing your
wife's data.