Reboot loop due to power failure after installing windows updates.

Update: Now performing a full scandisk. At 6% and finding bad clusters.

Nope, that didn't help either.

Try this if you can:

Remove your C: drive, set the jumpers to slave position, and add that as a slave drive to an XP workstation.
When you boot, the XP station will run  chksk automatically and fix some errors (even belore the login screen).
Then shutdown the XP machine, reset jumpers to Master position and plug your drive back in the original machine.
It should boot OK now.

There is no guarantee this will work, but it worked more than once for me.

It is important to plug it in as a slave drive (not master) in the other machine, and the other machine must be XP, not 2000.

Good luck.

Also see this:

 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315396

Thanks for your comments.

I've put a new hard disk in the PC and have reinstalled Windows and am 50% thru installing the apps. BUT I DO have the other dodgy hard disk available and I would like to resolve this for future reference. I did put the drive in another Win2k box and ran a chkdsk but it didn't help.

Will it really be of any help performing the chkdsk in an XP box?

It's worth a try. There have been two occasions where I had no luck with doing the chkdsk with 2000, but XP fixed it. I can't say for sure, of course, because it may depend on many factors. Do post back if you do try it.

Since the server was booting in safe mode, the first thing to try would be to Uninstall the updates that were installed recently through control panel>add/remove programs before drastic measures like r-k suggests.

We had something similar on our 2000 machine.  We did the update, and rebooted the machine fine.  But once the machine was able to connect to the internet it started to loop (reboot) itself.  There is a virus out there that will , after connecting to the internet, put the system in a reboot mode.  If the computer can connect to the internet, I would try disconnecting it from the network (internet) then try getting into the system.  Also do a search online.  This is just a suggestion, might not even be the cure or problem.

Thanks all for further comments.

redwulf, I did look at doing this but the updates are not timestamped and so I can't identify which ones were installed recently. As I mentioned, my feeling is that the updates did not cause the problem, they would have been fine had I not accidentally unplugged the PC :-(

orestyle - A good point but this PC was firewalled and AV'd up to the hilt and i'm sure it's the power outage that caused the problem.

r-k The only XP machine I have is a laptop, but I do have an external drive caddy so i'm running the drive through this and i'll let you know how I get on.

If safe mode is fine and windows repair didn't solve the problem then it means that there is something from third party which is corrupt on the server and which loads in normal mode. Try removing some third party which are not loading in safe mode. Most probably it may be a corrupt driver or something...

Let me know if this helps.

Hi All.

Well, I've done a chkdsk from XP and it didn't help. I've decided not to bother with the recovery, i'm going to pull the data off and wipe the disk.

Thanks all for your comments.

There comes a point where it's no longer worth trying to recover a failed operating system - where it's easier to reinstall - and i've reached it.

I'll ask for this Q to be deleted.