NorCalRoach

My laptop won't get past the Windows XP loading screen. The load bar continued to run after about an 1hr and half. I was able to get into safe mode and tried to do a system restore. When it rebooted, it hung on the black Windows XP load screen again. This is the 1st time for me. Anyone know what this is a symptom of? Easy fixes? Ways to help diagnose the problem?

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Acreo Aeneas

What was the most recent changes/additions you made to your laptop?

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Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th MID Member

deathknight

If you have a system restore disk that doesn't reformat your hard drive you can try that

IF it boots into safe mode but not regular windows you can try to see what is starting up by using msinfo32, left click on software environment to expand it and then startup programs

or you can use msconfig and click on the startup tab

to use, just open a run prompt and type msinfo32 or msconfig and press enter

in msconfig you can remove the checkmarks next to programs for them not to start up but in msinfo32 you cannot - you have to delete them yourself

also msconifg doesn't delete them it just doesn't start them up so once you figure out the problem you can go back into it and reenable all your stuff

but easiest way is if you have an xp install disk or a restore disk that doens't require you to reformat your hd

NorCalRoach

I haven't tried what deathknight suggested yet. I went into safemode and defragged my harddrive. It rebooted and Windows loaded fine. I go to shut the program down and see that little symbol next to the turn off button indicating that there's a Windows Updates to install. So I turn if off and it says please do not shut your computer off while updates are being installed. After it closes and shuts down I turn my computer back on. It happens again!!!! I can't get out of the Windows XP loading screen.

I didn't load or do anything different to my computer prior to this. Should I just let it try to finish loading what ever its doing? Where's the option to not load a windows update at? or could this be a virus?

I'll give DeathKnight's suggestion a shot. Although I'm not exactly confident that I know what I'm doing or what to look for.

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marstein

First, in safe mode, check the system event log. Any errors in there?

While in safe mode, back up your data. You don't want to hose your system and then realize that you lost a couple days of work.

There is a way to boot Windows so you see which drivers get loaded. Press F8 when the computer is past the BIOS boot state. Try enable boot logging mode. I am not sure. There is one where all the drivers flip by. This should allow you to diagnose what your problems is. Maybe a system file damaged.

If that's the case you can use a Windows installation disk to boot from the CD into a special restore environment - the recovery console. You can enable and disable drivers and do limited copy operations. It's no fun.

Alternatively you can get a Boot CD. Barts PE or Ultimate BOOT CD are options. They boot from CD into a pseudo OS and let you repair files etc.

Have fun! You'll learn and sweat a lot.

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Gigabyte P35-DS3R, 2GB, 8800GTS 640MB, Core2Duo E8400

Acreo Aeneas

If you have a Windows XP OEM disk, you can repair the Windows XP core files (reinstalls the core files of Windows XP without deleting any other data). That should resolve your issue.

If you don't have a XP OEM disk, your system should come with some sort of recovery disk/partition that you may or may not be able to use like the OEM disk.

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Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th MID Member

NorCalRoach

Thanks guys. I'm using my OEM disk right now. *crosses fingers*...

Edit: Worked!!

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Acreo Aeneas

Glad to hear.

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Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th MID Member