I am trying to get a Dell 8250 to boot into windows XP Home. When I turn the computer on it goes through BIOS fine then when it should be loading the XP logo it goes black. I've tried waiting for an hour or so to see if it would ever show up and it hasn't. A very few (VERY FEW) times I was able to boot the computer into safe mode, but only two or three times, and inconsistantly. There's also no indication of why it would boot into safe mode one time and then not the next time. I worked on this machine on Friday and I haven't been able to get back into safe mode today. I have tried chkdsk /p /r and even though it said that it repaired errors it didn't solve anything. I tried a repair install of XP Home (OEM) and it also did not work. And I also tried a DELL XP HOME CD which also did not work.
I removed all PCI cards and put a different video card in the AGP slot to no avail. I have cleared CMOS a couple times, also not helping. I ran F-Prot and Mcafee from Hiren's BootCD and they found a few things but solved nothing. I ran HDD Regenerator, thinking maybe a bad sector was causing windows to not function and that found no problems.
Also, normally when Windows XP has begun it's load you can't just press the power button to turn the machine off, you have to hold it down a few seconds, but on this machine when it goes black if I just press the power button it turns off immediately, absolutely no wait.
So I'm stuck on what to do with this machine short of a complete format/reinstall, which I have to avoid if possible. Any help would be appreciated as I am at a loss.
EDIT: This is my first time posting here. Hopefully I did nothing completely untoward.
I removed all PCI cards and put a different video card in the AGP slot to no avail. I have cleared CMOS a couple times, also not helping. I ran F-Prot and Mcafee from Hiren's BootCD and they found a few things but solved nothing. I ran HDD Regenerator, thinking maybe a bad sector was causing windows to not function and that found no problems.
Also, normally when Windows XP has begun it's load you can't just press the power button to turn the machine off, you have to hold it down a few seconds, but on this machine when it goes black if I just press the power button it turns off immediately, absolutely no wait.
So I'm stuck on what to do with this machine short of a complete format/reinstall, which I have to avoid if possible. Any help would be appreciated as I am at a loss.
EDIT: This is my first time posting here. Hopefully I did nothing completely untoward.
