my own computer! stuck in xp loading screen

[commentator8]

Hi all,

Hopefully people see this, as i can't really afford to wait long - might just go ahead and format. Anyway, a computer i set my mother up with a week ago decided that upon restart (randomly, it wasn't the first restart) it would get to the xp loading screen (with the blue bar) and stay there forever.

I could boot into safe mode, and tried to see if it was a config issue, but whatever config i selected in msconfig it wouldn't boot into normal mode. Tried NOGUIBOOT (just got stuck immediately), BOOTLOGGER, SOS etc.

Next i ran chkdsk /r from the recovery console. That found errors, hit 75, returned to 50 and then took 3 odd hours to complete . After it completed the problem remained, but i couldn't get into safe mode either (stuck on mup.sys).

Next i slaved it to my win 7 box, saw all the files, changed the boot.ini back to normal, unplugged it (via safely remove etc) and when i next went to plug it in it only registered as 31 mb (it is a 1tb drive)...

I eventually fixed that by using seatools to set the capacity to max, i can now see that all the files are there again, but when i try and boot same issue.

Ran CHKDSK again, no dice. All peripherals are disconnected.

I am trying a repair install now, and after copying the files and rebooting guess what - it gets stuck on the loading screen before it gets to the repair.

Other things tried:
restored to a previous restore point (successfully). No change.
tried to boot with "last known good configuration".
edited BIOS config to reset to default values.
ran a full system virus scan (mse) from the second computer
checked and reset the MBR and boot. They are fine.

Any ideas for the weary? BTW, its not related, but sounds a lot like this unlucky guy.

edit: I can use UBCD4WIN etc, so its prob not ram related. And the hard drive shows up fine.

 

[Paul Rodgers]

Clone the drive to another known good drive if possible. I'm suspecting a bad drive based upon the chkdsk and personal experience.

 

[commentator8]

Clone the drive to another known good drive if possible. I'm suspecting a bad drive based upon the chkdsk and personal experience.

I ran a short scan from seatools, but didnt want to spend the time with a long one. Doing the longer one now.

 

[Rafael]

run a H.D.D test
sssssssssssssss

 

[commentator8]

Running a scan, so far half an hour and 20 percent. That was the reason i held off till now... The hard drive is about 4 weeks old btw, not that that prevents it from going bad.

For curiosities sake, how would (technically) a bad HDD allow safe mode, but not normal, then not even safe mode, allow a PE disc to read it but not for it to be booted from etc. Would it come down to the boot section being on a bad sector? Because it seems strange that it partially boots - i would have expected a BSOD.

 

[OldSchoolPC]

Running a scan, so far half an hour and 20 percent. That was the reason i held off till now... The hard drive is about 4 weeks old btw, not that that prevents it from going bad.

For curiosities sake, how would (technically) a bad HDD allow safe mode, but not normal, then not even safe mode, allow a PE disc to read it but not for it to be booted from etc. Would it come down to the boot section being on a bad sector? Because it seems strange that it partially boots - i would have expected a BSOD.

If you hard drive has bad sectors, it may will prevent it from booting into windows normally. Safe-mode is a slimmed down version of windows therefore the bad sectors may not affect those core components. As for safemode later not working it could be because the bad sectors are spreading which is what happens in a failing hard drive. Best to clone or backup your data now before messing with it more.

 

[commentator8]

Thanks! Figured it to be that.

I have run the long scan and it came up clean. I am in the process of cloning it now.

 

[commentator8]

Scan came up clean and the cloned drive has the same issue - any ideas?

 

[Paul Rodgers]

Did you try to fix the problem on the cloned drive?

 

[commentator8]

Running scandisk now. Ended up slimming it down manually to 10gb from 80, and had to give up on clonezilla - got another cloner to work though.

 

[charles4308]

I would test your memory. When things get buggy, memory is on top of my list.

 

[commentator8]

And chkdsk didn't help.

 

[nhicktrush]

Looks like that is an HDD bad sector issue already.. have you tried repairing it using the original installation cd?

 

[FoolishTech]

And chkdsk didn't help.

lol chkdsk hurts in a lot of cases

Despite the seatools diagnostic results, I still suspect your drive. I wonder what GWSCAN would say... or HD Tune, not that you could run it on that PC now...

It's also not surprising that if you had corrupted files transferred in the clone to the other drive, you are likely to have the same issues loading Windows on it.

On my network I keep a copy of all the Windows directory files (minus the ones dealing with Windows Activation, of course) from fresh installs of different versions and editions of Windows. I keep it around if I need to pull a fresh file to replace a corrupted/infected one, or sometimes, a worst-case scenario with a large or unknown quantity of potentially corrupted files, I might copy over the whole directory to a slaved HDD in order to get it to boot properly on it's own.

So that's one idea for you... Worst case for you if you aren't setup like me, is you just do a fresh install on a spare HDD and copy over the files to your damaged installation.

If that doesn't work, then I might also try replacing the registry with a backup from system restore if you haven't already. Say a week or so back.

 

[commentator8]

When doing do (on the old disk) it would get stuck on the loading screen, while loading the repair install. The new one takes up my ide port the cd was using.

 

[Paul Rodgers]

Make a bootable flashdrive with the Windows ISO. Then try a repair install.

 

[commentator8]

After way too much pain (i tried using the registry from the restore in conjunction with the windows but it ended up mucking up the account/drivers) i am going to n&p. At least it was on my own system.

Thanks all.