PC in a rebooting loop

darklord17ed · Joined: Dec 09, 2003 Posts: 106

This is an HP Pavilion xt948 Desktop PC I'm working on. It has a P4 1.6 Ghz proc, 512 PC 133 memory, running XP home SP2.
The trouble is after a botched Norton upgrade( not by me) the computer starts to boot, says that there was a problem after a hardware or software install and would you like to start normal, last known good configuration, safe mode, safe mode network or safe mode command.
Clicking on any of these produces the same result... The computer posts, identifies the components, windows splash screen and then right back to error screen with the same options.
I'm not sure where to look first.

Thanks in advance.
Ed

User: inactive Posts:

Norton strikes again!!!!

And we keep telling people to get rid of that trash but nobody listens!

If you don't have a backup on disk or HD somewhere, you'll probably have to reinstall windows.

Sorry bout dat!

Shadow Cool

darklord17ed · Joined: Dec 09, 2003 Posts: 106

Shadow, I agree 1000% but this not uncommon with the friends that know I work on computers. I sing the praises of AVG and Kaspersky but only a few listen.

Is there no other work around for this?

Werebo

Allo Darklord Smile

Have you tried booting into 'Safe Mode'??? As soon as you power on, try tapping the 'F8' key repeatedly until a menu appears, then choose 'Safe Mode' from the list.

Hopefully, this should allow you to boot into a basic WinXP with only basic generic drivers etc.

IF it works, right-click the 'My Computer' icon and select properties. When the dialogue box appears, select the 'Advanced' tab along the top. Near the bottom of the next box is an area marked 'Startup and Recovery' with a button marked 'Settings', this needs to be clicked on.

In the next box that appears is an area marked 'System failure' with several tick-boxes, untick the box marked 'Automatically restart' then 'OK' everything back to the desktop and reboot.

When the PC reboots, an error message should appear stating what the fault is though it might seem a load of gobbledegook at the time Wink

. Post back with the exact message and that will give us an idea what to suggest next. Smile

darklord17ed · Joined: Dec 09, 2003 Posts: 106

Werebo,
See post above It was in a loop I could not break. Ask and click, restart and click, next step and click with the same result..
I pulled the drive and installed it as a slave in a working machine and low and behold windows saw the drive and that it had issues and fixed them(Scratches head in disbelief). Go figure.

Thanks to those who answered.

P.S. Shadow you will be glad to know that Norton will NOT be going back onto this machine. But these will.

AVG
Spybot
Ad-Aware
IOBit Autodefrag
Trojan Hunter

Werebo

The easiest way to break a repeating loop like that is called a power-plug Wink

Glad to hear you fixed it though and thanks for posting back with the solution to it

User: inactive Posts:

Deepest appologies!!!!

I seldom suggest putting a HD on another PC unless I'm sure the person I'm talking to is a Computer Tech.
That's beyond the capabilities of most home PC users.

For myself, a retired (or just plain Tired) tech, that's almost second nature to me.
I've seen many boot problems that have been fixed by me putting the HD in question on my own system as a slave and then running "Chkdsk /f" on it. While there I can also use my vast array of scanning software to check the drive for any form of Malware.

Blessings!

The Shadow Cool