Why Would this happen

[NiKeFiDO]

So my sisters older Dell laptop decided to break....

p4
1.2Ghz
WindowsXP sp2
256ram

It has the blue Dell Bios screen, then the black Windows XP screen where windows loads. Then it goes to the blue screen, but there is only like 3-4 lines of stuff on the top. Im not sure exactly what the error is, I might be able to get it again if I need to.
Anyway, i try starting up in safe mode, same thing.
The next time, instead of safe mode, I selected "Use last known working configuration" (or something close to that) and voila, the computer works again (im using it right now).

Any ideas on what is wrong? Seems indicative of a software problem to me.....

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Selecting "Last known working config...." restores the registry back to the last known good copy. This means the registry became corrupted.

The question is WHY?

Your hard drive could be failing (run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic on it) or something else could be corrupting it (turning the power off before shutting down windows for instance). Versions of Windows XP before SP2 were particularly prone to this problem so it's a good excuse to upgrade to SP2 if you haven't yet.

 

[NiKeFiDO]

thanks

yeah I have sp2.

Hard drive failue may be the cause? I did a fresh install of XP a few months ago (1 or 2).
Ill try a HD test i guess...what does Dell have for that?

 

[jameswhite1979]

http://tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287 a few hdd tools

What does the error message say?

 

[NiKeFiDO]

not sure, it doesnt say it any more.
thanks for the link though.