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XP Boot Issue

I have a Dell 8250 demension with XP home edition . It was running slow so I tryed to restart now it won't boot all the way. It stop's after the Bios page finishes. It won't let me boot in safe mode. I have tryed to use recovery, that looks like it cycles but still won't boot. I have run every thing i can think of chkdsk, fixdsk, fixboot . It still just hangs at a prompt after the bios does it's thing. I also have tryed to reinstall over the top of the first XP. I have family pics I don't want to loose. Please help

basicinstinct

First thing:
Download Knoppix and boot into that off CD (you may need to change the BIOS to boot from CD first).
If you can boot into Knoppix then you know this is not a hardware problem. You should also be able to recover your photos.

http://www.knoppix.org/

basicinstinct

also, have you tried fixmbr?

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true

Mohammed Hamada

You probably have a faulty ram Stick..! Try to open up the Computer Case and if there's 2 ram stick try to swap them by taking one out and switch on the computer with only one inside .. Take off the other cards like Lan, modem ...etc

If you have an extra VGA, or if you can rent a friend's VGA Card to test if it will works or not..

Also the knoppix idea is great... Try using it.

KcNightshade

ASKER

thanks I will try all of those. get back to you soon

nobus

>> I have tryed to use recovery, that looks like it cycles but still won't boot. << any errors or messages?
if you have an xp cd, run a chkdsk / f in the recovery console.

venom96737

well it sounds like your boot.ini is pointing somewhere wrong try going to recovery console and using bootcfg /scan or bootcfg /rebuild see if that gets you back up.

KcNightshade

ASKER

Thanks basicinstinct, moh10ly,nobus and venom96737 but everything i have done including your suggestions still hasen't worked. The knoppix is confusing to me I had to get bit torrent to download it then it wouldn't boot off the disk. I am sure i am doing or not doing something. Is it just one file or more than one, is it an iso file. sorry but i am not up on linux. thanks again everyone.

KcNightshade

ASKER

Oh i forgot nobus nope no error messages just a blinking cusor

Mohammed Hamada

Have you to access your C:\ drive on recovery console ? and were you able to access it and view the directories?

Try to use the chkdsk /f /r command mentioned by nobus, to make sure you have no bad sectors, and in case you think that it your HDD is not working properly or it could be damaged, then I strongly recommend that you hook it to any other computer as slave and get the data from it before applying any fixing command like the chkdsk or other commands..

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

nobus

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