Endless hard drive restarts

[GhandiInstinct]

After 2-3 seconds on the windows xp loading screen my hard drive restarts and continues to endlessly.

The last thing I did was a hard shut off and took out my monitor and mouse usb cords, then put them back in.

What are all the possible causes for endless reboots?

This actually happened spur of the moment

 

[GhandiInstinct]

bump

 

[SparkyJJO]

right after the bios screen punch F8 so you get the windows startup menu. Select "last known good configuration" and see if that helps. Sometimes windows screws itself up somehow and doing that wakes it back up.

 

[GhandiInstinct]

Didn't work, i tried a "No restart on failure" and the blue screen I got said: "Unmountable_Boot_Volume" any ideas?

 

[SparkyJJO]

unmountable boot volume? Either the HD is crapping out or a system file got corrupted. Try reseating the data cable going to the HD or replacing it, I had an IDE cable go bad on me once and cause random problems.

You could also run windows setup and do a repair installation (Not the recovery console - when it detects windows is already installed you tell it to repair). You don't lose any data that way. Kind of a lenghty process to do though.

 

[RockDog]

Hi GhandiInstinct,

I have often been able to resolve this issue by booting with the Windows XP CD into the Recovery Console and running CHKDSK. You should probably run a full diag with the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic utility after you are able to boot into Windows and backup your data.

As an alternative, I prefer to use BartPE to boot the system and then run CHKDSK from the command prompt.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314058

CHKDSK
chkdsk drive /p /r
The chkdsk command checks the specified drive and repairs or recovers the drive if the drive requires it.The command also marks any bad sectors and it recovers readable information.

You can use the following options:
/p : Does an exhaustive check of the drive and corrects any errors.
/r : Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

RockDog