Boot Cycle

[thebaronjocelin]

I just shut down my computer last night for a cool-down, and woke up this morning to find it stuck in an endless boot cycle.

It starts, shows the mobo-manufacturer's splash screen. From here, I can reach the BIOS and Setup utilities. However, once it moves on from there and starts verifying the hardware and DMI Pool Data, my I/O devices no longer work. I would enter Windows from safe mode, but I can't.

If I leave it alone, it then moves on to the Windows splash screen and attempts to load, at which point the screen blanks and the system restarts. I'm furious beyond belief right now. I can't see what would have happened; I tried to run a Windows repair but once it allows me the option to "Press any key to boot from CD," I still can't use I/O devices.

Can somebody lend a hand? (The system is Windows XP SP2, Home Edition)

For now, I'm going ahead and backing up all my stuff to an Ext. HDD.

 

[thebaronjocelin]

Alright, problem kind of sorted out. Switched USB keyboard to PS/2, started recovery console, am running CHKDSK with "/r" argument as we speak. Hopefully that sorts it out.

It's looking more and more like a bad boot sector as we speak; God help me, I don't wanna reformat this mother.

 

[fastco]

If that doesn't fix the boot sector run a FIXBOOT or Fixmbr from the recovery console or from a recovery disk like BartPE.

 

[thebaronjocelin]

Did a fixboot, Fixmbr. Still was not able to access. Ran XP reinstall/repair, had disk boot error.

Took the disk to another computer and tried to access it from the local Windows installation on that machine, reinstalled the disk in my computer.

Was missing integral system files. Ran another "CHKDSK /r". Works fine. Took for-freakin'-ever, though