Can't get into windows... Restarting all the time. Can't do ANYTHING! Help!

[GuitarLausing]

Hi, i'm new and everything (yippie!)

When i turn on my computer, i goes to a screen that says "Windows did not start correctly. Blah blah blah" And then i have to choose between [safe mode], [safe mode with network] and so on.. I know you know.

Problem is, when i continue (no matter which start-up i chose), the screen either 1) goes pitch black and computer restarts when i press a key, 2) goes pitch black with a little _ blinking in the top left corner or 3) Just restarts out of nowhere.

I thought it might be a problem with the cpu temperature, but no, it is a little high but not too much. I don't know if it's the power supply, but it's not the temperature.

I don't have a floppy drive, so i can't boot through that.

It is a relative new old computer, i have used for a couple of days now and suddenly this problem came up. Beforehand, the computer has been sitting disembled in the previous' owners basement.

Thanks a lot!

 

[IronDuke]

You can use the Windows CD to boot from. It may be neccessary to go into the bios and set your CD drive as first boot option.

 

[poertner_1274]

I would suggest repairing XP, found in this guide. If you have any questions feel free to post them back here.

BTW
:wave:Welcome to TechSpot:wave:

 

[GuitarLausing]

You can use the Windows CD to boot from. It may be neccessary to go into the bios and set your CD drive as first boot option.

Did that, but i fear that my windows cd is unbootable. I tried to put it in my parents computer (the one i'm on now), yes i remembered to set the Cd-rom as first boot option, but nothing happened.

Could i "borrow" the floppy drive from my parents computer, plug it in my own, and turn it on in the BIOS?

And could i from boot memtest86 and boot windows xp with floppy discs if i installed a drive?

 

[IronDuke]

There shouldn't be any problems using a floppy drive.

 

[poertner_1274]

Just be careful not to shock the system. Meaning after you have powered the machine off, unplug the power cord from the back of the PSU, then touch the side of the case to get rid of any static charge you have on your body, then take the floppy drive out. Put it into your PC and use a 98SE boot floppy with CD-rom support, then browse to your XP cd and run setup.exe

 

[Athena]

Had this very same problem a few months back. I was able to "repair" my system to get it to boot but the performance and stability of the PC was nearly worthless. (so I backed up my personal files to an extra partition and reformatted the boot partition so I could start from scratch)
Do you have any files on the PC's primary boot partition? If not then just re-install the OS from scratch. Many "hard-core" users will do a fresh install from time to time. I try to do it about twice a year.
Best of luck to you in what ever you choose to do.

oh and if you decide to do fresh installs from time to time like me make sure you do not have your extra partitions formatted w/ NTFS. That just makes to much extra work to try and access your old data then.

 

[IronDuke]

NTFS does add a little work but it is much more resiliant secure.

 

[GuitarLausing]

Put it into your PC and use a 98SE boot floppy with CD-rom support, then browse to your XP cd and run setup.exe

Where do i get one of those (98se boot floppy)??

A friend told that i could create boot floppy from a program on my windows xp cd. What is the program called? (he couldn't remember)

thanks!

 

[poertner_1274]

You can get it from www.bootdisk.com That has any and all boot disks you would even need.

 

[GuitarLausing]

ok, tried the 6 winXP pro boot floppies, am getting this error "file setupdd.sys could not be loaded. The error code is 4". Whats wrong. I tried reformatting the floppies and reloading them with the winXP boot system, and tried with different floppies.

 

[GuitarLausing]

Wow! Found out that my RAM was bullocks. So i moved the position of the RAM units and then it worked fine.. (?)

I used the 6 boot floppys and then installed from my XP cd, but the setup said "error! eeek!" all the time, and files were missing on the cd. I just continued anyway, but when i go to the real windows installation program, it's just stuck on '39 minutes left' for like an hour and then it says in the log:

couldn't register c:\windows\system32\initpki.dll

unathourised signature, errorcode 800b0001

failure in catalogs (or something like that)


Will i have to get a new XP cd or what? Help!!

 

[patio]

Is this a copy of an XP CD ? ? ?

patio.

 

[GuitarLausing]

What do you mean? Of course it's a copy. Like 'buying a copy of something'.

 

[NAIADO]

similar problem need help

Okay so my computer was giving me problems since its relatively new I decided to go to recovery mode (pressed F11) and I deleted everything. So when the computer was setting up Windows XP it froze. Several times it keeps freezing when it gets to the screen where it recognizes or is loading devices (something like that). Anyway I have gateway computer and the fool I am never made a back up or bootable cd. So I have none. My knowledge of computers is lacking to say the least. Question can I make a bootable cd from say my brothers computer. I then boot my computer or is there anyway I can get a bootable cd. I'm desperate don't know what to do. Thanks in advance for any input you can give me. Oh I also got an error saying I miss some file that has config in it. Sorry lack of info but I don't know much about computers, just enough to know this isn't good.