Windows doesn't load!!

[divineasianity]

I have 2 Compaq Presario 2529CL's. One is my son's that is up for sale here at anandtech, and one is mine, which I still use. Mine has worked fine up to this point, but now, when I turn it on, it acts normally at the first Windows screen (with the black background), but at the second screen (blue background, displayed right before you pick user), it stays stuck. Instead of listing users, it simply says Microsoft Windows XP.

Some other info:
I only have one user (me) and in the past, it has skipped the screen where you choose the user, and simply logged on.

I have some folders on the computer that are shared on the network. For some reason, even though I can't use the computer, these folders and their contents appear on my network.

I have tried a new windows install, but it never finishes, always getting stuck on something.


system specs:
P4 2.5 ghz
512mb ram (2x256)
40gb HDD

I guess thats all the important stuff
Thanks for your help guys! Any contribution at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

[PurdueRy]

possibly a corrupt/borked hard drive.

 

[Luckyboy1]

At this point, I'd set it in the bios to boot from the optical drive first and stick in the Windows CD and reboot. You can try a repair of Windows first, but I hate the results repair gives you. Still, I('d do it just to get as far as data I wanna save to CD before reformatting.

If it won't reformat, then it probably is a drive gone bad.

 

[divineasianity]

I dont think that it's the Hard drive, because I can still get data from my network folders. Thanks for helping though. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: divineasianity
I dont think that it's the Hard drive, because I can still get data from my network folders. Thanks for helping though. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

that doesn't mean part of its not corrupt. My roommate used his computer for a week while it was broken. It just went slowly and would eventually not boot due to the corruption

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: divineasianity
I dont think that it's the Hard drive, because I can still get data from my network folders. Thanks for helping though. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Try booting up in safe mode? And/or with logging enabled?

If you're hanging during the boot process, but your network shares are visible, there is likely a bad driver or corrupted file somewhere. This could be due to bad sectors on your hard drive, so don't discount that possibility. The fact that a reinstall would not work implies that you are having hardware issues.

If possible, I would recommend installing the drive as a slave or external drive in another system and trying to get any valuable data off it before doing anything else. If the drive is slowly dying, trying to reinstall Windows on it may just make more of your data inaccessible.