XP won't start- doesn't give error message

Hello,

Last night I received the dreaded "you are almost out of HD space warning ". I decided that I would delete some stuff to create space after restarting my computer because it had been on all day and was extremely slow. Instead of doing start-turn off I used the power button (start-turn off would have taken like 20 minutes+ because the comp was just that slow)

Problem-- when the computer started up again I got the "Windows did not shut down normally- how would you like to start it--- Safe Mode, Safe Mode with network, with last settings that worked, and normal." For some reason when I select one of these it won't actually boot xp... it just restarts the comp and goes back to the same screen.
After selecting one of the options- it goes to the windows loading screen and flashes a blue screen for a fraction of a second (too fast for me to read it)- then the comp restarts and I get the same message (windows did not shut down properly)
I was actually planning on a reformat this week because I bought a lap top and I figured I could move my pictures, songs that I wanted to save etc... onto it before deleting everything.
Any ideas on what I could do to get winxp to boot normally?

 

nevermind i fixed it...

Yea I found an article with steps on how to fix the problem...
here is the link for the article incase some else has the problem in the future--
http://www.creativemac.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658

 

I'm having this same problem. Only a couple things are different. 1) Everthing was working perfectly fine, and then I moved the computer to a new location (4 hour drive) and then things started going bad. 2) When I started up, I got an error message saying "The following file is missing or corrupted: \windows\system32\config\system" (I think it was that file but I'm not positive). I then booted from an install CD and went into the recovery console and checked to make sure the correct files were actually still there. They were, so I restarted again, and behold, the error message is gone, but windows still does not load (blue screen flashes too). I read the article cited above, but it did not help. Any ideas? (if at all possible avoiding a re-format of course).

 

Check all of your internal connections. Something may have loosened up.

 

Ok. So I checked, double checked, unplugged and reseated everything in my system. Normal boot still didn't work, safe mode with command prompt didn't work, and repair install gave me the following error: "Setup has determined that drive C: is corrupted and cannot be repaired." I see a complete reformat in my future. Any more ideas before I do this?

Thanks for the welcome PeteC.

*Disk check (chkdsk c: /r) says: "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems. "

 

Yup. Based on the chkdsk message I'd say that drive is toast. Hopefully just the software but maybe some hardware piece going south.

Do you have another drive available? If so, probably best to load your OS on it and then use the current drive as a slave until you can get any data you need then format it (or try to).

 

Alright. Thats what I thought. Thanks for the help everyone.