Win XP Boot Loop

[jhh979s]

As the title says, my friends computer gets stuck in a boot loop. The load bar on the XP splash screen doesnt even make one pass.

This computer was built in 2003, I know because I built it and sold it to my friend 2 years ago when I built a new one. Here are the components:
P4 2.4GHz Northwood
Intel D865GBFLK Mobo
Kingston 2x512MB DDR400
Antec SL350 SmartBlue PSU
Maxtor IDE 60GB HDD
Seagate SATA 120GB HDD
ATi 9600PRO
SB Audigy ZS

He left his computer on 24/7, and came home one day to find it shut off. When he tried to restart it, it started this boot loop.

My first assumption is the PSU is bad, but I wanted some other opinions before I buy a new PSU as I dont have any spare ones laying around to test out.

Tried booting it with one stick of ram. I disabled auto restart and got your run of the mill windows BSOD error message. I used a bootdisk with NTFS support and found both drives completely accessible. I unfortunately cant find my XP disk to run Recovery Console. Also Enabled Boot Logging but it never creates a log file.

Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Will it boot into "safe mode"? Corrupted drivers can do this, and they can get corrupted with an unexpected shutdown.

Try booting from a "live" Linux cd.

 

[jhh979s]

Nope, wont boot to safe mode. Loads a bunch of drivers then prompts, "Press esc to cancel loading d347bus.sys.", then restarts.

Just googled that file, think I may have found the problem.

not too familiar with linux. i'll give it a try.

 

[Porter21]

You will probably need to do a chkdsk with repair on the computer with a bootable CD. I have seen this once before and I belive that's how I fixed it.
Use recovery console and chkdsk /r.

Maybe you can find an XP disc somewhere?

 

[jhh979s]

found my xp disk, i'll try that

 

[Porter21]

Ok, sounds good. Please let me know how that goes.

 

[jhh979s]

Chkdsk made it to 50% then slowed to a crawl. Only moved 2% in 15 minutes. Can I assume this is normal? Been a while since I used chkdsk.

 

[Porter21]

Some drives can take an extremely long time. As long as it is making progress, I would let it sit. It may speed back up.

 

[jhh979s]

Chkdsk finished, but did not fix it. I have Knoppix6 up and running right now. What should I do with it?

 

[jackschmittusa]

Running Linux shows that your hardware is working (rare video issues excepted), and the problem is with Windows.

Do a repair install of Windows (all your apps will still work) and load the latest drivers for your hardware.

 

[jhh979s]

Ok, I'll have to get his XP disk then. Thanks
In the end just ended up doing a reformat, it was due for one anyway.
Thanks everyone for your input.

 

[Porter21]

Glad to hear!