Windows xp will not boot at all

In reply to myrthman98's post on December 30, They were virtually useless, I am glad they took them down. What is your system make and model? If there is a problem booting, XP is configured to automatically try to boot again and you can get stuck in a loop of just being unable to get past the boot options screen or none of the boot options you choose will work.

Sometimes when XP has a problem starting or crashes and tries to start again, it will give you a "short" menu of boot options and none of them will seem to be the right ones to get your system going again. You've tried them all!

The options resemble the XP Advanced Boot Options menu, but the one option you need Disable automatic restart on system failure is not offered because XP has gone too far along in the boot process and offers you a limited number of boot options. If you do not see the Disable automatic restart on system failure option, you need to reset your system and start tapping the F8 key on the keyboard until you do see the Disable automatic restart on system failure option.

For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Thread starter Sean Olivers Start date Oct 20, Status This thread has been Locked and is not open to further replies. The original thread starter may use the Report button to request it be reopened but anyone else with a similar issue should start a New Thread.

Watch our Welcome Guide to learn how to use this site. Sean Olivers Thread Starter. Joined Aug 23, Messages This is really BAD. There is no sign of anything on the screen whatsoever.

I can't get into safe mode, nor use a bootdisk as far as I can tell. I cannot get any control through the keyboard or mouse, apparently. It's as if the computer is not connected to the monitor. I bought this computer from a friend one year ago. He is knowledgable, and had cleaned it up quite well. The problems started about a month ago. It would suddenly crash and reboot, sometimes with "recovered from serious error" reports which MS said was driver-related.

Which specific driver remained a mystery, so I was unable to do much about it. Two weeks later, the problem became more pronounced. After this page appeared, it would not complete booting, so I would turn it off and on again, up to 12 times before it would finally reach my desktop configuration.

But at other times, it seemed to boot normally. Without internet, it seems to have gotten worse. I tried Killbox, Hijack This, so eventually in frustration I simply looked for the file in my Registry and deleted it that way, but it still reappeared in all my Spyware scans.

I know that's not the wisest thing to do perhaps, but I didn't know what else to do. It was still there yesterday. It seems as though most of the crashes occured while I was using Office XP. One of the error messages I got was indeed related to Office XP. So I uninstalled my copy and deleted his old Office folders, and reinstalled my copy.

This was yesterday. I let it do its thing, but a couple of times it froze again , and a couple of times CHKDSK didn't apparently find any errors. It rebooted properly a few times after CHKDSK, but it sometimes it didn't finish the entire process-usually, the desktop icons would begin to appear, but they wouldn't display the proper "logo" - it would just have a generic "exe" icon, and although I could move the cursor, I had no other control of anything.

By proponent , August 28, in Windows XP. On Aug. During installing, a BSOD appeared. It mentioned the file ctoss2k. Unfortunately, I neglected to jot down the error-message numbers. There were three updates to be installed, one of them being a new Audigy driver.

Since then, my Dell will not boot to XP. I've tried booting to safe mode, booting to safe mode with command line, and turning off automatic re-boot. No change. The system passes the hard-drive diagnostic and the other OS works just fine. Therefore, I suspect the problem is in software rather than hardware. Would anybody have any better ideas? Thank you, but my attempts to boot in safe mode have led to the same result as before: nothing happens.

The screen will just stay like this. I left it for about 30 minutes when I gave up shut it down. This is supposed to allow you to install Windows XP but just fix the damaged files without reformatting and wiping out the hard drive.

So, with my bootleg XP install disk, I restarted the computer and started following the Windows Setup steps. But it doesn't. This time when I go through the Windows Setup steps I get stuck on the one screen where at the bottom it says, "Searching for previous versions of Microsoft Windows.

After waiting for about minutes I just gave up and shut it down and that was it. That's where I left off. Someone I know says that the MBR might be corrupted beyond repair, whatever that means. Could this possibly be a hard drive issue and not an Windows XP issue? Again, at this point my priority is to retrieve the data on my hard drive. Can this be done by taking out the hard drive and perhaps reinstalling XP on a new hard drive and then putting the old one back in?

Any helpful advice would be greatly appreciated. Joined May 11, Messages I would do this Take the drive with piratedXP out of your PC.. Once you have it at that point, shut down, install your other harddrive if its sata on another port, if its IDE as a slave. Then boot up, backup the important files that you wished to save. From there you are fit to do as you please. Endfro, thank you very much for the suggestion. Two specific follow-up questions: 1 I assume that when I put in the new hard drive that I should install the genuine XP on it that I have, correct?

It includes Service Pack 1a. This is where I'm confused as I have no experience working with multiple hard drives and slaves, etc. Thanks again. Joined Oct 2, Messages So you will have 2 drives running now. Afterwards you can either leave the old drive in there or physically remove it completely or whatever you wish to do with it.

Joined Sep 20, Messages I have a better suggestion, that may not lose your data. Of course no guarantees You take your official genuine XP disk and boot from it, run the install, then when it detects your current install, select it.

Then tell it you wish to repair. This will then copy the OS from CD to the hard disk without messing with any files, settings, etc. But you will lost all your patches. After the first reboot you will be prompted to enter your Product ID, and this should update your PC to a legit copy.

Go ahead and patch normally from here. You will probably then have to activate your version of windows also. Hopefully you'll be legit and no more problems. You shouldn't need to adjust jumpers but always check your drive for specific details. If something doesn't make sense just ask here.