Help! Computer doesn't boot Windows! VERY URGENT!!!

[t3h l337 n3wb]

My violin teacher's husband just called today and said his computer was broken I went over to check it out. He has a Dell and Windows XP home I think. Anyways, once it gets past the Dell logo screen, it would normally load XP, but there's an error and it says Windows did not load properly. It gives choices to boot in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Network something, Safe Mode with command prompt, last known working configuration, boot normally, etc. None of it works. It enters the black screen where it displays the XP Logo and the blue loading bar at the bottom, but it just keep sitting there with the bar moving, and then it just restarts itself. An easy solution would be just reformatting, but he has like 3 year's worth of documents and stuff on there. Any ideas on why it's not booting? If not, then what would be a good way to boot some other program/OS from a disk and backing up the files?

 

[tm37]

Repair install is your friend

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

How do I do that?

 

[EULA]

boot off the XP cd, it should give you an option to repair the installation, or reformat.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

So repairing the installation won't delete anything right?

 

[engineereeyore]

Actually, there is a disc called mini-pe that would really be your friend. It's a bootable cd that load a "version" of windows that provides you access to the currently installed os without having to boot to it. Here are some of the items included on the disk:

Accessories:
Editor2 Text Editor
Free-Cal 1.3
WordPad
Calculator
MS Paint

System Tools:
Resource Hacker 3.4.0.79
Dependency Walker 2.1
Avast! ScanDisk
Avast! RegEdit
AIDA32 3.93
Keyfinder PE
CPU Clock
Trout 2.0 (Trace Route)
Check Disk
Disk Copy (floppy)

Hard Drive Tools:
DirectorySnoopFAT32
DirectorySnoopNTFS
SectorSpyXP
DiskData
DiskTective
PartitionInfo
PartitonEdit

Paragon HD Tools:
Paragon HD Manager
?Partition Manager 5.5
?Partition Explorer 1.0
?Drive Backup 5.5
?Disk Wiper 5.5
?Ext2FS Anywhere 2.5

Winternals:
Winternals ERD Commander 2003 (partial function)
Winternals Disk Commander

File Management:
PowerDesk Pro 5
AB Commander 6.6
ExplorerXP 1.01
Total Commander 6.03a
a43 File Management 2.30
freeCommander 2004.03
PowerDesk File Finder
Disk Recon 1.0
Effective File Search 3.2

Data Recovery:
R-Studio 2.0
CIA UnErase 1.1
Easy Recovery Pro 6.03
GetDataBack FAT 2.25
GetDataBAck NTFS 2.25
Handy Recovery 1.0
Winternals FileRestore
Restoration 2.5.14

Data Wiping:
Eraser 5.7
Disk Wiper 5.5?

File Compression:
WinRAR 3.30
WinZIP 8.1

AntiVirus & Spyware:
McAfee AntiVirus (with GUI frontend)
McAfee Stinger
Avast! VirusCleaner
NOD32 VirusCleaner
Trend Micro SysClean
Ad-Aware Pro 6 build 181

System Backup:
Drive Backup 5.5
Drive SnapShot 1.35
Symantec Ghost 8

ISO Apps:
Ultra ISO 7.0 ME
ISOBuster Pro 1.6
WinISO 5.3

Hex Editors:
XVI32 Hex Editor 2.5.1.0
Tiny Hexer 1.0.1.18

Image Viewers:
ACDSee Classic
IrfanView 3.91

Defraggers:
VoptXP 7.21
DefragNT 1.9

Additional Apps:
HashCalc 2.0
Nero 5.5.10.56
WinImage 6.10
Off By One Browser

Network:
Angry IP Scanner 2.21
Remote Desktop Connection
Tight VNC Viewer
PE Network Configurator
IP Config

Storage:
Auto RAMdisk sizer
Adaptec ASPI verification

Additional Features:
Change display resolution
Change mouse characteristics
Change date & time
Accessibility Options
Task Manager
Install DigiWizPE to Hard Drive

The virus defs are:
McAfee (05/05/04)
McAfee Stinger (05/04/04)
Avast! VirusCleaner (05/03/04)
NOD32 VirusCleaner (05/05/04)
Trend Micro SysClean (05/03/04)
Ad-aware (05/03/04)

If you can't find anything there to fix your problem, then the computer definitely has a serious problem. You can probably find mini-pe with a google search.

Good luck.

 

[anarchyreigns]

Right. (meaning the repair installation won't delete anything)

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

@engineereeyore: I went to the site, http://jacksonian.ca/brian/info/miniPE.htm, but I couldn't find a download link anywhere! When I googled it, I did find a lot of torrent sites though... So do you have to buy it?