Nasty system issue - stuck in a reboot loop

[BigTwinky]

Seems that i cant load up windows xp

was working fine yesterday, came home and the PC was off.
I turned it on, and it just reboots over and over. I do get a quick blue screen, but it goes by way too fast to see anything.

So my noob self put in the windows xp cd and booted from cd. It loaded and I selected to repair.

I got to the repair console and after some googling, I was told to run chkdsk /f. However, when I run this, it was its an invalid parameter. I run chkdsk and it comes back and says it has found issues.

Great, thanks for that, but how the hell do i fix them?

Any ideas?

[Duke{CLR}]

Isn't there some kind of log of the errors?

[BigTwinky]

I dont get a log. The only hint I get is a blue screen that i cannot read.

From running chkdsk /p, all it says is that its performing additional checking or recovery (says this 3 times) and then says that it finds problems. No log.

I guess I can try a chkdsk /r ?

I defragged my computer a few days ago, and while i did reboot after, I have a sneaky feeling its linked to that

[DougBob]

If all else fails, once again I recommend this cd. It's learning curve may be a little steep for a beginner but it has some recovery tools that may help repair the drive or partition.

SystemRescueCd

[BigTwinky]

thanks DB

I ran the chkdsk /r and waiting for it to complete.
It was stuck at 50% for a good 5 mins, so I started to think it got borked somehow. Then it jumped to 51%! I've never been happier to see a 1% increase lol.

I dont really mind reformatting and such, but I have a good 1-2 months of photos on there that i havent yet backed up and would hate to lose them

[DougBob]

You should be able to recover the photos with a Linux CD like this one. It should at least allow you to use an external hard drive or thumb drive to copy them off to. Don't give up on it yet. You can tackle this tiger and win, I know you can

[Jed_Clampet]

BT, the defrag shouldn't have caused any problems. Once this is resolved go here to get a free defrag that does a great job and actually works.

http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/

Here is a list of the most common things to do when your PC wont boot. Try #8 to get the pc to stay put on the blue screen. There should be some kind of stop error code that starts with something like STOP 0x0000008E, numbers could be different. Then the code can be googled for a possible fix.

You can also try "last known good configuration". This has saved my bacon before.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-6031733.html

If all you really need of the computer is the photos, you can put that hard drive into another pc and browse to the pictures and copy them off that way.

[Qicmee]

Can't help much, but the link below is my standard reference for XP startup errors. Process gives very good details. Might not fix it, but these steps shouldn't cause any data loss. Hopefully only a system file has been damaged.
Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands Icrontic Tech

If nothing fixes it, I've used this Knoppix Linux CD/DVD to copy files files from notebook drives that Windows won't recognize.
Knoppix Linux Boot CD, Download Disk and Documents, Discuss, Get Help

In any case, I wouldn't trust that hard drive longer than I can hold my breath.

Good Luck!

[WalkinTarget]

but I have a good 1-2 months of photos on there that i haven't yet backed up

Sounds like a gentle reminder if you ask me. It may have cost me $600, but my WHS (Windows Home Server) was my smartest hardware purchase last year. Saved my bacon 3 times already.

[lady-MGS]

I've had that happen a few times. The first time was a virus. The second time was my hard drive died. Finally (at least I hope) was the thermo paste was bad. Once we fixed that, it was fine. Not sure if I helped but I thought I would throw that out there.

[mapes]

Sounds like a gentle reminder if you ask me. It may have cost me $600, but my WHS (Windows Home Server) was my smartest hardware purchase last year. Saved my bacon 3 times already.

Not to be a snark but, Linux is free and I run raid1 on all of my important data

[Qicmee]

I love snarks! But my wife made me get rid of most of mine.

Here's some light reading for anybody considering WHS vs. a Linux setup.
Windows Home Server and the Linux Debate? - Jason Burns Blog
Summary: "...it?s probably the same reason I buy Dr. Pepper and you might buy Dr. Thunder..."

My own sophistication extends just far enough to use an external drive for daily Cobian backups and to make a monthly image of my system partition.