XP Pro Crash & Reboot Error Message "Error Loading Operating System" - Any Ideas, PLEASE

[David Probett]

Hi

My father and my 13-y-o half-brother, living 115 miles away, have an
XP Pro PC that is running a non-legit copy of Win XP Pro.

I have been on at them for months to do something about this because I
could foresee that it would lead to trouble! one day.

When I telephone MS UK to ask how to legitimise the copy in use - by
purchasing a Licence to legitimise the operating system the clone
would only repeat the mantra "They must purchase a full,
shrink-wrapped new copy of the system".

I, personally, didn't mind this - after all it would not be me who
would be paying LOL - but the MS lady would not give me any assurance
that their PC would not lose all their data.

So they left well alone.

A week, or so ago, I am told that the PC either crashed or refused to
boot. (Getting a simple answer from a 13-y-o games fanatic is
impossible.)

When they got round to advising me of their problem I suggested
powering the PC off for a few hours, then re-booting it from scratch
and leaving it on for a VERY long time indeed.

I am now told that when turned on the screen is blank apart from a
very faint message at the top left-hand corner of the screen which
reads "Error Loading Operating System"

Over a period of 36 hours all that happened was that the message got
brighter and brighter.

Can anyone advise why this happened and what is the solution?

I would prefer a solution that does NOT involve trashing all their
data. BUT, if this is unavoidable, so be it. It's not MY data. LOL
(Just that I Shall never hear the end of it!)

Many thanks, in advance.

David

David Probett
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Greg Palmer]

David,

This type of error is normally down to some corruption on the hard drive.
Generally in the MBR (or Master Boot Record).

Generally this is quite an easy thing to fix, however you are going to need
a bootable copy of windows XP.

You need to start the Recovery Console as discussed in
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/EN-US/

Then you need to run the Disk Checked by using the following command

chkdsk c: /r

Once the disk checker has found and fixed any errors then you need to run
the MBR fix command which is

Fixmbr

Once this has finished restart your machine and if all has gone well then
you will be up and running again. At this point I would make sure that you
take a full backup of any important files and this can be an indication of
drive damage.