Woe is me - XP pro won't boot up in any mode

[Julie]

Hello everyone.

So here is this Windows XP Pro machine which had an ATI
All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro video card in it and all was well.
Then the video card failed, so we temporarily substituted
a Matrox G400 dual head card so we could use the machine
until we replaced the bad ATI card.

After physically installing the G400, the machine booted up
fine and XP auto-detected the card and installed its built-in
drivers for the card. When we rebooted the machine, that
was it. Now when the machine tries to boot up, it displays
the initial XP splash screen just fine, then it goes away and,
just as the desktop is about to load, the machine spontaneously
reboots itself. It will keep repeating this indefinitely without
ever booting to the desktop.

We got a replacement ATI card (same exact model as the
failed one) and installed it, but the problem persists. We have
tried the "last known good" option but it does the same thing.
Even selecting safe mode or safe mode command prompt
does the same thing.

We tried the manual registry rollback routine from the KB
(where you replace the five hives with those in the repair
directory using the recovery console) but the problem remains.

I was just assuming that the problem was related to the loading
of the G400 drivers because that's when the problem began.
But the fact that even safe mode fails to start the machine makes
me wonder if there isn't something else causing this.

Anyone here have any ideas on this?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Malke]

Hello everyone.

So here is this Windows XP Pro machine which had an ATI
All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro video card in it and all was well.
Then the video card failed, so we temporarily substituted
a Matrox G400 dual head card so we could use the machine
until we replaced the bad ATI card.

After physically installing the G400, the machine booted up
fine and XP auto-detected the card and installed its built-in
drivers for the card. When we rebooted the machine, that
was it. Now when the machine tries to boot up, it displays
the initial XP splash screen just fine, then it goes away and,
just as the desktop is about to load, the machine spontaneously
reboots itself. It will keep repeating this indefinitely without
ever booting to the desktop.

We got a replacement ATI card (same exact model as the
failed one) and installed it, but the problem persists. We have
tried the "last known good" option but it does the same thing.
Even selecting safe mode or safe mode command prompt
does the same thing.

We tried the manual registry rollback routine from the KB
(where you replace the five hives with those in the repair
directory using the recovery console) but the problem remains.

I was just assuming that the problem was related to the loading
of the G400 drivers because that's when the problem began.
But the fact that even safe mode fails to start the machine makes
me wonder if there isn't something else causing this.

The fact that Safe Mode fails to start makes me wonder what made the
original video card fail. Perhaps it was from the motherboard (agp
slot?) and any video card is going to fail? Do you have a cheapo pci
video card you can try?

Malke