Windows

One possible cause is a hard disk having trouble reading the boot sector and/or system files. If that's the case, hard disk failure in the near future is likely. As a precaution, ensure that your important files are backed up.

Hope it turns out to be not quite so drastic. Maybe one of our other gurus will have a more pleasant answer, but back up your data regardless.

Dalton

Hi Barb....I agree that it seems to be a harddisk issue. The master boot record could be corrupt, or the drive may be physically failing, or your cables may be loose where it connects to the motherboard.

How old is your machine? If the MBR is corrupt it is possible to just overwrite it to correct the issue.

It is best to grab any important files and either write them to a floppy (size permiting), burn to CD, or email them to yourself.

Feel free to email me if you'd like...

First we can do some diags on your hard drives. When you can get it booted, right click on MY COMPUTER on your DESKTOP. Go to MANAGER. Now select DISK MANAGEMENT. Right click each hard drive you ahve and select properties. Go to Tools. On Error Checking click check now. Check both boxes. Click START. It will say it can do this on next reboot, say YES. Do this to all your hard drives if you have more than 1. Reboot. It will scan your drive for errors and if it finds any, hopefully fixes them. See if it then reboots normally.
If so, go back to that MANAGE screen, select Disk Defrag. Defrag all your drives.
Hopefully this helps.

If Windows cannot fix this problem I recommend you get Norton Systemworks. It has a better defrag and scandisk feature which can fix track 0, sector 0 (boot sector) of your hard drive.