M
MrBill
I have a Windows XP/Home system that has been working fine for about 4
months, but now as it is booting (dashes cycling across the bottom,
then Windows XP starting message and cycling color bar), it goes into
a POST, as if the reset button was pressed, and repeats the cycle.
I generally leave my system ON if I plan to use it in the next few
hours. About a week ago when I tried to "wake" it (move the mouse,
press a keyboard key), the screen wouldn't go out of power save mode.
I noticed the disk activity LED was on solid. I rebooted the machine
(reset button on front panel) and all was fine for about a week.
Yesterday, again it woudn't "wake up". When I reset it to reboot it,
after the starting Windows XP message but before the username icons
appear, the system goes into a POST and tries to reboot. The disk
activity LED is constant during this period. This continues until I
power off the machine.
I can boot from the XP CD and go into recovery mode, but the recovery
mode does not "see" the non-working version of windows. Instead it
asks if I want to create a partition. I have tried R at the first
prompt and after pretending to want to install Windows from the CD and
pressing F8. Since it cannot "see" the bad version of windows, "R" is
not an option after pressing F8 to accept the license agreement.
From the Recovery mode (DOS?), I cannot list the contents of the C:
drive (it is an NTFS partition). After about 30-45 seconds, the DIR
command times out.
My primary disk is a 200 GB drive with 80 GB and 100 GB partitions.
The 80 GB partition has the XP system that won't boot. I have a 2nd
drive in the system (slave) that also has Windows XP/ Home on it (it
is an 8 GB drive; I upgraded to the 200 GB drive 2 months ago). When
I modify the BIOS to boot from HDD-1 instead of HDD-0, that version of
XP/ Home comes up OK AND I can see all the files on the disk that
DOESN'T boot! It appears to be there with files intact, but is not
accessible during the boot cycle or from the recovery mode. Does that
make any sense?
Looks like I can backup the data to CD, but I'm not sure how to
restore the system and make it bootable. Nor am I sure what happened
(MBR virus? Bad hardware? Corrupt system files?).
Anyone have any suggestions on what went wrong or what to try to get
it working again?
If I run FIXMBR and/ or FIXBOOT from the recovery mode, will they
erase the partition information for that drive?
Thanks,
Mr Bill
months, but now as it is booting (dashes cycling across the bottom,
then Windows XP starting message and cycling color bar), it goes into
a POST, as if the reset button was pressed, and repeats the cycle.
I generally leave my system ON if I plan to use it in the next few
hours. About a week ago when I tried to "wake" it (move the mouse,
press a keyboard key), the screen wouldn't go out of power save mode.
I noticed the disk activity LED was on solid. I rebooted the machine
(reset button on front panel) and all was fine for about a week.
Yesterday, again it woudn't "wake up". When I reset it to reboot it,
after the starting Windows XP message but before the username icons
appear, the system goes into a POST and tries to reboot. The disk
activity LED is constant during this period. This continues until I
power off the machine.
I can boot from the XP CD and go into recovery mode, but the recovery
mode does not "see" the non-working version of windows. Instead it
asks if I want to create a partition. I have tried R at the first
prompt and after pretending to want to install Windows from the CD and
pressing F8. Since it cannot "see" the bad version of windows, "R" is
not an option after pressing F8 to accept the license agreement.
From the Recovery mode (DOS?), I cannot list the contents of the C:
drive (it is an NTFS partition). After about 30-45 seconds, the DIR
command times out.
My primary disk is a 200 GB drive with 80 GB and 100 GB partitions.
The 80 GB partition has the XP system that won't boot. I have a 2nd
drive in the system (slave) that also has Windows XP/ Home on it (it
is an 8 GB drive; I upgraded to the 200 GB drive 2 months ago). When
I modify the BIOS to boot from HDD-1 instead of HDD-0, that version of
XP/ Home comes up OK AND I can see all the files on the disk that
DOESN'T boot! It appears to be there with files intact, but is not
accessible during the boot cycle or from the recovery mode. Does that
make any sense?
Looks like I can backup the data to CD, but I'm not sure how to
restore the system and make it bootable. Nor am I sure what happened
(MBR virus? Bad hardware? Corrupt system files?).
Anyone have any suggestions on what went wrong or what to try to get
it working again?
If I run FIXMBR and/ or FIXBOOT from the recovery mode, will they
erase the partition information for that drive?
Thanks,
Mr Bill