WindWalekrX Posted April 5, 2011 Report Share Posted April 5, 2011 My copy of XP broke down on me earlier today. Safe mode, last good config, none work. I get the splash screen, then a blue page fills up with about 4 paragraphs and reboots in under a second.I tried going into the recovery console, but that also results in an instant reboot. Booting from the cd to install won't let me get past the first option. If I choose recovery console, it reboots, if I select install Windows, it reboots.There is nothing physically wrong with the drive. Or there wasn't two days ago when I last ran a full health diagnostic. The system has only been powered down normally in those past two days.I'm not crazy about the idea of taking a partition wizard after it. Luckily my OS partition is seperate from my data partition, but I've had a manager mess up the entire MBR before and I'd just assume not lose a ton of data.I get the feeling I'm going to have to tackle this with some Easeus tool, but I'm hoping someone knows what's up. I can't think of any great way to Google XP Install and Rebbot, because that does not produce anything like my problem at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pawz7 Posted April 5, 2011 Report Share Posted April 5, 2011 If you had not mentioned the blue screen I would have thought it might be a hardware problem. You could try putting a new empty drive in and seeing if the machine instantly reboots when that is in, which, if so, would suggest a hardware problem. PSU or memory perhaps, or a short. You say that if you boot from the cd it won't let you get past the first option - what option are you referring to? You say it reboots if you choose RC. When does that occur? When you reach the screen inviting you to press R to get to Recovery Console? Don't understand that. If it reboots when you actually get into RC, could it be that you are pressing Enter when you have told it which partition you want? That will cause it to reboot. Apologies if you are an old pro and know this.If it were a power good thing it would shut down the machine just after the initial boot, but you are reporting reboots so it isn't that. You are getting a STOP message after the splash screen shows, which seems to indicate the problem is software related but not corrupted boot file as it would not get that far if so, but which you cannot see because the machine is set to restart Windows on a crash (if you can get to the Advanced Options screen F8 you could temporarily disable that and then you would see the STOP message and be able to copy down the bug numbers to post or Google.) I do not see why it would reboot when you are running the system disk though - unless you have a memory stick gone bad?Have you tried running another boot disk such as Barton PE, to see how the machine behaves then? It is a question of elimination perhaps. Try this and that. Also, as you have your personal data on another partition, you could, if needs be, take the drive out and reformat it on another machine and then return it and put the OS, drivers, applications etc back on. Last resort stuff. Getting to see the BSOD would be really useful..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bludgard Posted April 5, 2011 Report Share Posted April 5, 2011 Hi, WindWalkerX.By the thread title I assume you want to reinstall XP? If so, completely wipe and fully format the Windows partition. Reinstall. You should be sorted. One Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digerati Posted April 5, 2011 Report Share Posted April 5, 2011 If you had not mentioned the blue screen I would have thought it might be a hardware problem.Actually, blues screens typically do point to hardware problems - either the hardware itself, or the drivers. Since this is happening right away, it does look like hardware to me. Unfortunately, the BSOD error message/number was not provided. I always want to start with known good power. So I would swap in another PSU or have that one professionally tested. I would then look at RAM - perhaps run with one stick at a time. I would inspect the motherboard for leaky capacitors - not so common on newer boards, but unfortunately, no information was provided there either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WindWalekrX Posted April 6, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2011 pawz7 was right, taking out the second stick of RAM solved the issue. My old install of XP works again. For some odd reason my Live Ubuntu cd worked with the bad ram, no crash. I wasn't aware that was possible with bad ram.My system is only 8 months old, so I hadn't really expected RAM failure. I've owned around 20 sticks over the years and this is the first one to ever go bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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