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WIndows XP Pro wont start up

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9 replies

by rg11

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I have Windows XP Pro with SP1 on a machine and we started to have some problems with it taking a while to boot up. Now it wont boot up at all. When I turn it on it goes through the checks then the windows xp pro splash screen comes up. Now usually the next screen will say windows is now starting up and then my logon screen shows. This is not coming up. After the splash screen goes away the screen goes blank. No cursor, no numlock light, nothing. It will sit here with a blank screen until I shut it off by unplugging it.. Could this be the boot ini file? or what??? I have cloned machines so I would be able to use the win recovery console and copy the file over from a good pc if that would help...

9 replies

by shawn

My guess is that you have a hardware fault somewhere in the system. Try taking the drive from this box and booting it in another system. If it boots fine, then your hardware (mobo, RAM, etc.) has gone bad, and you'll need to get it repaired/replaced.

If you remove the drive and it doesn't boot in another system, try putting a different hard drive in the original box. If the new drive in the old system boots, then you've got a bad drive (the original one), and you'll need to replace that.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Shawn

by oz_media

Could be a number of hardware issues.

Defective Sound, Graphics or NIC card (Although you ususally won't get past initial post).

Defactive RAM, try swapping it out with known good RAM. Can you boot in SAFE MODE? If so check, remove and reinstall all hardware and drivers.

by maxwell edison

I think you may have some corrupted system files.

Try booting into safe mode, and then run System File Checker to see if you can restore the corrupted files. Run the command "sfc /scannow" (without the quote marks) at either the command prompt or at Start - Run. You'll be prompted to insert your installation CD, and it should repair the corrupted files.

by pctech

Hi,
I would first suspect a failing hard drive since the problem has become progressively worse as opposed to a good boot and then no boot. I suspect that the drive is developing bad sectors.
Since XP is fairly machine specific, especially IDE contller drivers, I would only try this drive in a like system, should you try testing in another system. The motherboard chipset needs to using the same drivers as what was used on the installation of XP. I have limited success with an XP drive booting in a dissimilar system but, it usually results in blue screens. To test this drive, I would use the hard drive manufacturer's drive fitness test that you can download from their web site. While this test may not be all inclussive in its results, it will find any bad sectors.

I hope this helps you.

by rg11

I am able to boot up to safe mode with command prompt... This is the only mode it will boot to..

by bazz00

The machine seems to be failing at the point when it is trying to load the GDI driver. It could be a problem with the Windows GDI driver (Graphic display interface) there was a microsoft patch not that long ago KB835732 that seemed to cause issues with this in certain setups. Have you performed any recent patchs and then attempted to remove this patch KB835732. Any attempt to do so seems to corrupt the GDI driver. I am not sure what you can do if this is the case, I ended up performing a format/reinstall since I couldn't even boot into safe mode either

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