XP Hangs during boot

Hello. I'm having problems with my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop. It won't boot past the boot screen. The green bar just keeps going from left to right forever. I tried booting into safe mode but the last driver loaded is the "agp440.sys" and it hangs there. I tried to disable that via the recovery console but it hung at the driver before that, "mup.sys" I can faintly hear the hard drive spinning at this point. I have a feeling something after that is preventing it from moving forward?

I decided to repair my xp installation, so I booted up the cd, hit enter, and followed the directions to repair. It seems to have copied everything, it reboots then it just hangs there again. I can't figure what's going on. I can't even repair as it can't even proceed into the installation screen.

Also, I can't boot into any of the other modes (Last known configuration, safe mode with networking, boot logging, command prompt) It hangs at the last driver in every mode. Is there a way I can get into the hard drive and home network to backup some files (mostly pictures) onto my desktop computer? If so, I can probably reformat the partition and shoot for a clean install. HELP ME! Thanks for all your replies and suggestions.

1.4Ghz P4 / 256MB RAM
Windows XP Home Edition SP1

 

is this a new problem? a new install? If its dying there, its trying to initialize some of your hardware and failing. I recieently swapped hard drives between a p4 1.4 and a p4 2.8 and it died on the same file, becuase the motherboards are different. My solution was an in place upgrade install. forced it to go back through all the hardware detection, etc.. This would problably work for you if this is a new install. If this problem just started occuring, it could be a bad sign of hardware problems.. How did it get into this state?

 

JoeHobart,

Yes, this is a new problem, but not a new install. I bought the laptop 2 years ago and it is the first time I've experienced this problem. I replaced the hard drive because the old one died, but that was back in January of this year, so I don't think that could be the problem. I would swap that one in but like I said it's dead. I have no idea how it got into this state. I'm trying to repair the installation, but when it reboots it hangs at the splash screen, never going into the installation screen. What can I do? Is there another way I get can into the hard drive and network to copy all my pictures onto my desktop? That's basically all I want to recover if I have to go through the reformat and clean install. Thanks for your reply.

 

I have a free partition on the drive (about 15GB). Would it be posslbe to install XP on that partition and then transfer any files I want from the other one, then delete the problematic one? Just a thought. I wouldn't mind installing a fresh copy of XP, I would just like to be able to transfer some files into the new one. Now I feel stupid for not backing up.