XP Home won't load

[Bill Kunert]

Over night my XP won't load. I get the XP splash screen then hard drive activity ceases and it just sits there with a black screen. Also will not load safe mode. I get the list of processes and it hangs. If I try booting from the XP cd I get the Starting Windows message and it hangs there. I'm using Visa on another drive right now. I've done an Avast virus scan on the XP drive and it found a virus in my Documents and Settings folder in a temp file. That was removed. I've had intermittent problems with XP not loading on the first attempt but always worked on reboot and was always able to get into safe mode before this. Don't really want to reformat and reload so I hope one of y'all has an answer. Board is an Abit KN8 SLI, processor A64-3500+, memory 1.5 gig Corsair value ram, 160 Gig Seagate and 80 gig Western Digital, both IDE. Seagate is XP drive. Video is Leadtek 7300GT with DDR3. Power supply is Antec 400watt. Two optical drives, each set up as slave, hard drives are primaries.
Thanks
Bill

 

[John]

Originally posted by: Bill Kunert
If I try booting from the XP cd I get the Starting Windows message and it hangs there.

That sounds like a hardware problem to me. You could have thousands of viruses or other malware and it would not cause the drive to hang during setup. I'd recommend running WD data lifeguard - floppy on it. Here's the ISO version.

 

[Bill Kunert]

I ran WD data lifeguard on both drives and they passed. I have my original XP disk plus a Slipstreamed SP2 disk and neither will boot on either of my two drives. They both get to the "Starting Windows" at the bottom of the screen and stop. I fear that if I format the XP drive my XP disks won't load far enough for me to load windows.

 

[btcomm1]

Well, do you care about the data on the XP drive? If not then you would be no worse off then you are right now. If you don't format you are stuck with an xp install that will not boot. If you format and can't reinstall then you have no windows xp install but either way it will not boot up into xp. I know it's been working, but maybe you should check the jumper settings on your optical drives, make sure they are set as master and slave and are on the correct part of the ide cable. Other then that it sounds like it could be your ram that has gone bad. Maybe try taking some out and see if the xp install will go past starting windows.

 

[irishScott]

Try some stuff here (Get the full CD): http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Also, what was the virus?

 

[pcgeek11]

Have you attempted to boot with the optical drives removed / unplugged. I have seen an optical drive that is starting to go south cause these types of problems... Maybe unplug the non boot hard drive too...

pcgeek11

 

[Bill Kunert]

I disabled unused drives and optical drives in bios. Still stops at "setup is starting windows". I tried this with both drives and opticals. I have formatted my C for a clean install. My Vista RC2 disk boots just fine from both opticals onto both hard drives.

 

[Bill Kunert]

Finally got it fixed. I disabled USB function in bios and setup ran fine. Re enabled USB during first reboot and everything is good to go. Thanks for all your replies.
Bill

 

[pcgeek11]

Originally posted by: Bill Kunert
Finally got it fixed. I disabled USB function in bios and setup ran fine. Re enabled USB during first reboot and everything is good to go. Thanks for all your replies.
Bill

That threw me off... My laptop will not boot with " A Certain Cheap USB Drive Enclosure " plugged in, ( I have the USB enabled in the BIOS ). The difference is it never starts to boot Windows etc... just sits on a blank screen with the cursor blinking. Strange how yours starts and then quits...

Glad you got it working.

pcgeek11

 

[Bill Kunert]

Originally posted by: pcgeek11

Originally posted by: Bill Kunert
Finally got it fixed. I disabled USB function in bios and setup ran fine. Re enabled USB during first reboot and everything is good to go. Thanks for all your replies.
Bill

That threw me off... My laptop will not boot with " A Certain Cheap USB Drive Enclosure " plugged in, ( I have the USB enabled in the BIOS ). The difference is it never starts to boot Windows etc... just sits on a blank screen with the cursor blinking. Strange how yours starts and then quits...

Glad you got it working.

pcgeek11

This whole thing started with the computer freezing after the splash screen. It would do it every once in a while then one morning it refused to go any further. It also would not boot into safe mode. I was going to try a repair but the cd wouldn't go past "setup is starting windows" after loading all the generic stuff. Tried about everything and finally disabled USB in bios and that was it. I never had this trouble till I got my Abit KN8-SLI motherboard.