Boot Freeze at Windows Splash Screen

Hi there

Yesterday after rebooting my machine i encountered a hang at the windows splash screen. It boots fine up until you get to the windows screen. It will just hang there.

Things i have tried so far:

Repair Windows Installation. This did not work as the repair requires you to restart windows to complete the repair. (also stopped me from going into safe mode)

chkdsk /r scan using recovery console.

Booting into safe mode - After running the repair i can no longer get into safe mode. I return the error " Windows XP Setup cannot run under Safemode. Setup will now restart "

Obviously i dont want to do a fresh install as i have a large amount of data i need. Any ideas?

System Specs:

P4 2.8ghz with HT on Intel D865GBF Mainboard
1g DDR400 RAM
128mb Radeon 9200
80g WD IDE
40gb WD IDE
Sony CD-RW
LG DVD-RW
Soundblaster Live 5.1

(all have been working fine for ages now)

Im thinking driver issue but i cant get into safe mode to check

 

Especially if you think it is driver related, I would remove all added hardware (PCI cards, printers, scanners etc) and try the repair again.

If the repair still fails and you could not get to Safe Mode, you may need to do a reinstall (without format). Reinstall to the same folder (C:\Windows), your data will still be there although you will need to reinstall all your programs.

See if anyone has information on getting the repair to work.

Matt

 

Is your system over clocked ?

 

No the system is default. No overclocking.

I replaced the primary IDE cable last night and this allowed me to get past the splash screen and continue my install. However upon turning on my machine this morning the same problem occured.

A format is in order, i just need to be able to back stuff up

 

If you had another HDD available or you have multiple partitions, you could backup the data in Safe Mode (if you can get into Safe Mode). Otherwise put the drive into another computer (as a slave drive) and transfer the data there.

If the drive is formatted as NTFS, a DOS based system won't be able to read it.

I would be concerned that there may be problems in the boot sector, especially with the cable replacement. Most of the major HDD manufacturer's utilities have the ability to backup the MBR, I would do that before proceeding much further, otherwise, if the MBR gets corrupted, you may lose your data.

Matt

 

I sense from your description that you are trying a repair from the repair console. As a consideration you might want to try doing a repair installation from your CD by going all the way through as if doing a new installation but hit the R prompt (actually the second R prompt you will encounter - first one is the repair console) to repair instead of doing a brand spanking new installation. Be forewarned, this will do a complete install and there is no turning back to a previous configuration once the process is initiated, however, all of your programs, data and settings will remain intact. You will need to reinstall all service patches and your drivers and you will need a slipstreamed SP2 CD or an SP2 version of XP if you were current on your patches. Similarly, you'll need your key.



edit: this doesn't resolve why you can't boot into Windows and it is recommended that you exhaustively try to resolve this issue before heading to a repair installation as a last resort. What did you do different over the course of the last couple of days that may give us an indication of the real problem source?

 

Where do you find the second R prompt? I'm having a problem not unlike this one.

 

Smileman111,

Here's a step by step guide to do a repair install... XP Repair.
(courtesy of michaelstevenstech.com)

B