Resolved Dell Diminsion 2300 in continuous boot loop

I've run into something that has me stumped. I am working on a lady's computer that was re-built by someone else in a different city so it as none of the original stuff installed by Dell. She doesn't have any original CDs or software.

System:

Dell Diminsions 2300 with a floppy drive and CD. XP Home.

Problem:

In a continuous boot mode: In normal mode after login in reboots. In safe mode it just reboots after loading drivers. I tried booting from the CD with my old copy of XP but I get a system disk error. Just to be sure the CD wasn't the problem, I also used a copy of Win 98 and got the same error. I think I have another CDROM around here somewhere and plan to try that next but thought I'd pop in here and troll for suggestions.

Mitch

 

Hi Mitch,

By all means, go for the other drive. If it works, turn off Auto Restart so when you get a BSOD, it'll stay there so you can get the error message.

Also, remember that Dell has a Recovery partition and that may be causing a problem in that it's looking for it's boot files; unless the previous person completely wiped and reformatted the drive.

 

Thanks Pete, I think I'll try that. But I'll have to go get some CDs tomorrow.

 

I'm pretty sure the previous guy got rid of all that. The Ctrl+F11 option on startup does nothing.

 

Happily, thanks to Pete's link I am now logged on to the BBS on the previously inaccessible computer.

I have one minor issue. There is a folder under Documents and Settings which I cannot delete. It is a user folder named Don. I get an access denied error anytime I try to delete any of the subdirectories or the parent directory. I tried Killbox but got an error no .net framework. file assassin didn't help and dropping to safe mode did nothing to help. I know it is probably something stupid I am not doing but I need help with this one.

 

Sorry for the henny penny moment. I forgot to take full ownership of subdirectories and objects. The directory is gone now.

I'll report back when I give it the all clear.

 

Well the computer is running just fine. I left it on and connected to the internet all night last night with nothing untoward going on. I had scanned it with mbam and after the 171 infected files were removed I scanned with MSE and then did an online scan with HouseCall (Kaspersky wasn't available) and found nothing else untoward. I installed MVPS Hosts as well just to protect the user from their own itchy clicking finger.

I am sending it home in the morning.

Thanks again Pete and to all who provided suggestions.

Mitch