Windows XP home not booting

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Hi,
I am unable to get Windows XP home to boot up on my desktop PC. It starts to boot and just hangs at the microsoft XP screen with the bar still moving across, no hard disk activity.
If I restart and start in safe mode I end up getting blue screened with Windows has detected a fault and is shutting down to prevent damage to your computer!! Doesn't sound very good.
Any ideas how to recover??
Thankfully most of my files are backed up onto an external hard disk so at the worst I stand to just have the pain of re-loading windows.
 
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I would first try booting from the xp disk and start the recovery console. Run a full check disk by typing CHKDSK /R on the console. It will take a while....ZZzzzzz...

Post back when it's done.
 
Hi,
I can boot from the XP disk until the screen where I enter R for the recovery, then it fails to find the hard disk!!! It is a SATA 80GB single hard disk. I can boot knoppix (linux) from CD and that can see the HDD and all the information. If I go into DOS, FDISK sees the NTFS partition. Do I need to load a driver in order for windows to see the hard disk? The windows disk I got for this machine was a retail uprade from windows ME if this makes any difference. I have an OEM full version of XP on a CD so will try that. I can't remember having to preload drivers when I did the original install, but that was a few years ago.
Thanks for the info
Spark123

Edit, full OEM version of XP does exactly the same.

It doesn't look promising, does it? :LOL:
Well I was ready for a spring clean anyway.
 
Do you know what sata controller (or motherboard) it is? might need an "F6" disk
 
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If you got your PC from somewhere good!, you should have a SATA driver for your board on the supplied (hopefully) driver disk. You will need to get them onto a floppy cos that's how XP likes it. As Eggy said, press F6 when you see the prompt for "Press F6..." and it will prompt for a driver (after a slight delay).

If not, find out what chipset you have (prob need to open case and look), and post back.
 
The motherboard is a V600DAP, can't see the manufacturers name on the manual but google suggests it is a jetway. I have the CD which came with the motherboard, there is a folder for SATA375 on it.
 
Sounds good. If it's friendly, that folder will contain a program for creating a driver floppy, or will contain drivers, which you will need to copy to a floppy.

Then do the F6 thing when booting the XP disk. Press S to specify an additional device. You'll probably get a list of drivers next. It might be trial and error here, but some will look more 'obvious' than others. select one and then continue the install.
 
Yep, thatll be the one, theres no indication as to whether you actually pressed F6 or not - been like htis since NT days, I personally keep tapping it till the "press F6 blahdy blahdy" goes away, as mentioned, its pretty straight forward after that
 
OKay, will give this a go first thing tomorrow. I have just spotted a download on the jetway site for SATA driver for my motherboard, will downlad it later on another PC (my laptop hasn't got a fdd arghhh!!).
Thanks
 
OK, got the floppy disk done last night, booted windows CD, pressed F6 and got the list (thankfully only 3 options which were which version of windows), got to the recovery console this time, (couldn't remember admin password, was just return :oops: ) did the CHKDSK /R and after an age came back with "CHKDSK found and fixed one or more errors on the volume".
Reset PC and can boot into safe mode but still hangs at windows XP loading screen for normal.
 
ok, at least we get into safemode now.
Do you recall installing anything, updateing drivers etc prior to this happening? have a good think ! If so, undo whatever you did.
A couple of suggestions, you could try a system restore - but after the initial reboot, go back into safemode - the restore should carry on in safemode, then reboot once its complete.
You could try disabling unneeded services etc from safemode also.
You could check the bootlog (ntbtlog.txt from within your systemroot (pribably windows) directory), sometimes this is handy - it shuold create a log if you boot into safe mode.
Also - check eventlog
 
I haven't installed anything recently, maybe windows update or macafee has done something? It seems to fail very early in the boot sequence i.e. within 5secs of the windows loading screen appearing.
As the old (80gb) hard disk was 60gb full, mostly of rubbish :oops: I am now considering using this opportunity to udgrade the hard disk as well as a spring clean, I see PCworld have Samsung 160gb for £50 atm.

Edit,
I've bit the bullet and got a new hard disk (or two lol). Just finished reloading and everything seems to be working fine. Thanks for the help, needed the driver to get windows to install.
 
Now you can get those invoices out to recoup the money spent on the HDD's :D

Glad you sorted it 123
 
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