Win XP freezes when loading....

[taltos1]

Hello,
I am running XP Pro, on a pentium 4 system, and a raid 0 array. All was good for a while, but now I cannot load windows. It always freezes at the loading windows screen (the one with the scrolling progress bar). I am not sure what to do.

But I have a few specific questions?

1. If I use the Win XP disc, can the repair console see the array?
2. If I reinstall windows, will my whole c: drive be wiped, I have stuff I need to back up? and do not want to lose on the c: drive (i.e. in folder "my documents" etc..)

Any other suggestions would be great!

Thank you

 

[dman]

You'll need the raid drivers on a floppy disc. During the XP Boot it'll ask you to press a key to load any other device drivers. You then put in your floppy w/ the raid drivers and the recovery stuff should then work like any other install.

If you have really important stuff I'd recommend finding a way to image the raid array to another drive first, just in case. Otherwise, chances are if XP can see the array then you can recover it using the recovery mode or repair install.

 

[fisheye]

You've tried booting into safe mode?
(if the menu doesn't come up press f8 during boot)

Even if you can't find a way to fix the existing install, or repair it, as long as you don't mess around with formatting, just installing XP on top of itself will only overwrite the OS files. Choose a different user name and all the things in My Documents, etc. should be intact. (Of course, the HDD will be 'dirty' with remains of programs that aren't installed, etc., but your data will be safe)

Though I'd only recommend that as a last resort. A repair, either throught the recovery console, or simply a repair install, is much preferable. Though I've ran into a problem before where I couldn't perform a repair install because the previous windows installation wasn't recognized.

 

[taltos1]

OK, so if I understand this correctly, I can reinstall windows and my files will not be overwritten, only the OS files right?

Also, I am not sure how to get into safe mode, as when I boot, the bios says "press F8 for BBS popup" and that menu allows me to select my boot device, so how can I get to windows safe mode?

Thanks