PC will not load windows. Graphics Card?

[Son]

Hello.

My problem is this. I normally leave my PC running overnight when leaving it to do something. The other morning I woke up and it was constantly restarting. It would load up to the "Windows XP Home" loading screen, then when it should be going into the Login screen, the monitor does nothing and after a few seconds it restarts again to repeat the process.

Basically, when the monitor dies I've even tried turning on the Caps lock / Num lock buttons to see if Windows is loading and hoping the GFX just died, but they don't show up on the keyboard lights, eithr, so I'm thinking that windows isn't loading at all.

I can access windows from Safe mode and it runs fine. First time I done this it gave me a warning that a device may not be working, it was my graphics card.

I'm also on a network but I didn't know that in Safe Mode with Networking I also can't transfare files onto another pc, meaning I can't backup important files that I need for college and etc.

I take it that its the graphics card? I haven't formatted in over a year, I use to do it regularly, but for some reason I don't think a format is going to work and I don't want to risk losing these files for nothing

Anything I can do? or at least a way I can backup some of my files through networking? It's really stumped me and buying new equipment isn't much of a option either.

My basic equipment set up is:
nVidia 4200 ti
AMD Atholon 1800+
Gigabyte motherboard (forget the model)

 

[SkateZilla]

if you can boot into safe mode,


Open Event Viewer Check system events, see fi theres any errors or save dump reports,

post save dumps in a zip here..

Most likely driver or RAM

 

[Merc14]

Have you tried a barebones setup to try and determine what has died or been corrupted? Have you done a virus scan?

Do a barebones setup and that will tell you if your hardware is good or not. If you don't know how to do a BB setup, post here and I'll paste my guide into this thread.

 

[kaymastah]

There may be quite a few reasons for such behavior. The previous suggestions are valid. Post some more info and we'll give it a look.

 

[compguy13]

You can try this, set your BIOS to boot to CD, place your Windows XP Home edition cd in the CDROM drive and click yes to save the cmos settings. once your pc boots and ask you to press any key to boot from CD do so. Your pc will now start to load windows again. Let it continue through this process, and once it gets to the screen thats shows the user agreement press F8 and it will take you to the next screen, there it look to see if there is any other versions of windows installed, it should find your OS already installed, it will then ask if you want to install a fresh copy or repair the one already there. press R for repair. You should then get a screen that ask which OS you want to repair that shows 1.c:\windows, press 1 and enter. once you have the cursor flashing next to C:\windows, type in FIXMBR and hit enter. it will ask you are you sure you want to fix the masterboot record type in y and press enter, it will then repair thr MBR. once done type in exit and it should reboot, and you should be ok.

 

[Son]

Thank you for the replies.

I will first try the repair option and if it doesn't work, then I'll post back on how I would go around doing a BB setup.

 

[xero]

Do you have an dual output vidcard?

About the backup. Install acronis true image and make sure you burn a recovery disk to cdrom. Use a friends computer to do this.

Plugin an external second hdd (when available) to usb port

Next you boot from the acronis recovery CDROM (your own pc)

Select create image and for destination select the USB HDD

It will create one large file of the selected partitions