Win xp keeps rebooting

swap out the hard drive and installed a fresh copy of windows?


you may need to repair windows
put in xp cd and boot from cd
Enter at 1st blue screen to install windpws
F8 accept license
R to repair windows
follow the wizard

I did not install a fresh copy of windows...also i did use the repair utility on the xp cd but it just leads me to the c: drive on the command prompt...Are there are special commands i should be entering there? the commands i have run are chkboot and chkmbr

i mean fixboot and fixmbr

this same thing happened when my brother an i resized the HDD partition using a program that didn't support NTFS, lol.  I tried to emphasize spending 20 min imaging the drive, but he was too impatient.  Anyway the gist of the story is the partition/HDD/system files might be corrupt, if say they tried to resize their partition with the wrong program and you would need to follow the above advice.  

you could run a hard disk test to verify the integrity of the drive and eliminate the need of replacement.

you are using the wrong repair,

instead of pressing R at the 1st screen to go recpvery console you press ENTER to install windows
then you press R

Try swapping out the RAM and/or testing the RAM;http://www.memtest86.com/#download0


Also make sure the power supply is good.

I am not finding the second repair utility

so you boot from cd right?
it should ask R for recovery console or ENTER to install windows?????

press ENTER to install windows

then it should ask for you to accept license???? press F8

then it should ask what you want to do, you press R to repair windows?????



wat options are you getting?

I press ENTER to install windows
then i accept license f8
Then it shows the partitions asking me which one i would like to install xp on...the 3 options given include install; delete partition; and quit

ok it cannot find windows for some reason, HDD could be corrupt as ptleitch suggested

it should display an option for R if it finds a version of windows

run a diagnostic on your hdd

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21283394/Hardware-Diagnostic-Utilities.html?query=hdd+diagnostic&clearTAFilter=true

Ok i ran the diagnostic on my hdd

Test Results: ST340015A

Problem detected on a non Hitachi disk drive
Please contact you HDD supplier for additional support.
Disposition Code = 0x72

Anymore suggestions would be appriciated. I will be back in the morning to try to further resolve this issue.

what HDD manufacturer is it?

why would it say non hitachi drive?

@antunb maybe it was a hitachi utility he used and it detected a non hitachi drive

@haddad05 you might want to try to use a utility made by the manufacturer of the drive, though i think i use something called powermax no matter who the drive is made by.  There is something called ultimate boot cd or UBCD that has many different HDD tests made by the various HDD manufacturers.  If errors come up when running an HDD testing utility the drive is pretty much shot and needs to be replaced.

yeah thats what i was thinking, thats y i asked drive man

Ultimate boot cd; http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/download.html

In that case your best bet would be to extract the drive and install it into a desktop using a laptop adapter and extracting any useful vital information like documents, music, emails, address book with a program called Instant backup and then install a new drive into the laptop and reinstall windows, search the laptop manufacturers site for drivers, and transfer any documents you were luckily able to retrieve from the damaged drive.  

http://www.towodo.com/products/instantbackup/

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=%2Fen_us%2FSupport%2FSoftware%20Downloads%2FAll%20Downloads&downloadID=22

also, if the drive is damaged, go the the manufacturers website and see if it is still under warranty.  I had a laptop drive fail and I left it sitting in a drawer for over two years.  Then one day I went to toshibas website and found out it was still under warranty and got it replaced for free in a very timely manner.  Also you can find great deals on ebay I remember seeing a 60gb toshiba between $30 and $50 and they were still sealed.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Laptop-Hard-Drive-Toshiba-60gb-NEW-MK6034GAX_W0QQitemZ6863847030QQcategoryZ42183QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

ouch its a seagate

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,574,00.html

here is seagates diagnostic utility

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

and warranty verification

http://support.seagate.com/customer/warranty_validation.jsp

he never said it was a laptop, did he, i might be getting my posts confused?

probably needless to say, PLEASE IGNORE THE LINK TO EBAY ABOVE, THAT IS A LAPTOP HDD, DON'T BUY IT, lol

Thanks sundeepgopal your suggestion work but now it goes to the windows logon screen and asks for a password. The thing is the owner said they dont use a password to log onto this pc. So i kept the password field blank and hit enter. then it says the "local policy does not allow you to log on interactively?"

try booting up to safe mode and removing the password in the user management in control panel

I booted in safe mode but it still brings me to the windows logon screen...although it did have and additional user to logon to in safe mode but that user was also denied logon.

just did a google search

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+xp+password+recovery&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

this kinda looks promising

http://www.lostpassword.com/windows-xp-2000-nt.htm

I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE WITH ANYTHING ON THESE LINKS

Also something that might be worrysome is the result of the HDD test you ran.

"Problem detected on a non Hitachi disk drive"

Which means that once you get the OS working again, you might be hearing from your client again in a week.  You should probably use seagate's seatools to verify the integrity of the drive.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/