Stuck on endless boot cycle

My XP machine (after running fine last night with normal shutdown) now is stuck in a re-boot loop.
It gets as far as the XP logo with progress bar then goes into a re-boot again.

Just the other day was checking HDD drive for errors and all was fine.

Any ideas?

Mychael

Try booting into safe mode.
We may be able to resolve the problem from there.

Did you do anything in particular before the cycle began?

Ok, so if you manage to get into safe mode you have a few choices:
- Do a system restore to before the problems.
- Try to identify the problem using msconfig, for example.
As a last resort:
- Try to do a Repair Instal using the install DVD of XP.

Though, if you do do a repair, be carefull as it is not as easy as in 7. Will try to find a good tutorial.


Cheers,
Fire Cat

Not as such. Ran a disk check a few days ago but since then nothing at all. just normal startups and shutdowns.

HOWEVER, the previous week had to swap my HHD onto another Sata controllor as that was playing up, could be a dying M/b although this seems more like an O/S thing to me or a corrupted entry in the system.

I'll try to get into safe mode


I can select SAFE mode but it wont complete. Goes into the same re-boot cycle again.

Hi Mychael
Have you recently installed SP3
This happend to the lads pc and what i did was restart the system with the windows disc and did a repair because ours did the same.

I would go with the first few options fire cat said before doing the repair.

No go on the SAFE mode as per my last post. It wont get to boot up in safe mode either. Had SP3 installed for cant remember how long, never had an issue.

Really no major changes for ages apart from having to put my HDD into another SATA port on the M/B but even that was some weeks ago.

have you tired selecting Last Known Good Configuration

And if the above don't help try this > Go into your BIOS and make sure that your 1st boot device is set to your Optical Drive. Then Insert your windows cd and boot from it. At the first option menu press the "r" key on your keyboard this will take you to a black screen. If it asks which windows do you want to repair and it gives you an option to press 1. Press 1 on the keyboard. After that it will ask for an username, press "Enter" and then"Enter" again. Then where the cursor is flashing type in: chkdsk /r and press enter. It will take about an hour maybe longer. when it's done type in the following: fixmbr and press enter. If it prompts do you want to replace it say yes, Windows will inform you that your MBR has being rewritten, then type exit and hit enter to exit. Go back to BIOS and set as normal.

Maybe that will work. Though, if he can't even boot into safe mode, I don't know how he's going to boot like that.

I found this good tutorial on a repair install:
www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Hope this helps,
Fire Cat

Thanks, I'll give that a go and report back in a few hours.

Mike

No go I'm afraid. It all worked but on re-boot I got:
STOP: c000021a {Fatal] System Error}
The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000026c (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shutdown.

All written on a pretty blue screen. :-(