Resolved Windows XP Startup Error: "Windows did not start successfully"

Hello,

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I am having a startup error on my computer, which appears every time my computer boots. The error is as follows:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this.

If your computer stopped responding, restarted unexpectedly, or was automatically shut down to protect your files and folders, choose Last Known Good Configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked.

If a previous startup attempt was interrupted due to a power failure or because the Power or Reset button was pressed, or if you aren't sure what caused the problem, choose Start Windows
Normally.

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked) Start Windows Normally

Use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlight to your choice.

Seconds until Windows starts: 30

After this message appears on my screen I end up chossing Start Windows Normally or just letting it count down until Windsows starts. After that I can log on to my computer normally and everything works fine. I don't recieve any error messages on my computer except for the one on statup. I have ran antivirus software, defragmented and cleaned up my harddrives, and ran the disk check utility and still the problem persists. I have tried everything else that I can think of including system restore but that didn't work either. This error isn't harmful to my OS but in the very least its very annoying.

I would greatly appreciate any help on how to resolve this issue. Thanks!

 

Hello David Ryan, I appreciate your help. I have gone into the System Configuration Utulity and I checked the startup programs, and I also checked to make sure that the boot paths were correct and they were. I tried a normal startup and a diagnose startup but I still recieved the same error message at startup. I also tried System restore but that didn't work.

Any more help would be greatly appreciated from anyone. Thanks!

 

Best thing is to do a Windows XP Repair install, hopefully you have your XP installation disk.

Boot from the WinXP CD (you may have to change a setting in your BIOS that allows you to boot from the CD). Do not choose the option to repair an XP installation using Recovery Console when prompted, choose the option to To set up Windows XP now press ENTER.

After more files have been copied, you'll get another selection screen where you should select the current XP installation, & the option To Repair the selected Windows XP installation, press R.

 

Thanks for your reply Arie. I will definetly try to do a repair install for Windows XP because that seems like my only option. I am close friends with a computer technician so I will call him and ask him what he thinks I should do.

Thanks for your help!

 

Hello again Arie I talked with a computer technician and he said that a repair install should be my last resort and that I should downalod this program called Regseeker. Hopefeully this program works and fixes my that startup error.

If you have any more information about what you think I should do just let me know thanks!

 

Thanks for your reply hawk22, I will try and pull the power cord out of the wall socket and leave it out for 10 minutes and then plug it back in to see if that corrects the issue.

 

Hello again everyone,
I tried pulling the power cord out of the wall socket and leaving it out for 10 minutes then pluging it back in and then turning on my computer again but that didn't correct the issue. I am so angry. I have tried everything that I can think of including the advice I got from this forum which I greatly appreciate and running this program called Regseeker which found about 500 erors on my computer and it fixed them all. My computer is defenitly running better than it did before but I still haven't found a way to correct this Startup Error. I am getting so frustrated that I just want to use a hammer and pound my computer to a pulp lol. It seems that my only option to do now is to do a repair install of Windows XP. I only wanted to do this as a last resort but I guess I have no choice.

Please let me know if there are any other ways of fixing this error otherwise I will have to do a repair install for Windows XP.

 

Hi again Bill,
I greatly appreciate all of the advice you are giving me. Are you sure resetting the security settings will fix the problem? I just hope my computer doesn't get worse because of resetting my security settings to there defaults lol. Just to let you know I went to the event viewer under administrative tools and under system I noticed that the source of the startup error seemed to me like it was in the Service Control Manager. I think it might be a service thats causing that startup error but I am still not sure. I will look in the event viewer again and on my next post will let you know more specificly what the error contains.

 

Thanks again Bill it seems to me that you are right about the service being a symptom not the source of the error. I think the Startup error is being caused by an OS error not a service because the services end up loading after the Startup error so its a problem with my actual OS.

 

Hello everyone,
I scanned my computer for malware and I didn't find anything, I then tried the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service, and I reset my security settings back to their defaults but that didn't work either.

Anyway what I am going to try that I haven't done so yet is to open my computer and check my hardware connections to see if the problem is hardware related and I am going to get rid of all the dust on my computer that has built up over time. If that doesn't work then my last option is to do a repair install on my OS. Doing a repair install is going to be my last resort but if I can't think of anything else then I may have to do that.

Hopefully by doing a repair install it will fix my Startup Error and the broken User Account link.

 

Hi all,
I called a computer technician and using the Windows XP CD he did a check disk / Repair in the recovery console. It scanned the computer for errors in the OS and it found and fixed one item. But somehow after I exited the recovery console and then restarted my computer the Startup Error was still there.

I pressed delete during startup and went to the BIOS settings and fooled around with those a little bit. The computer technician said that its a Startup problem with my computer and there doesn't seem to be any corrupted files in the registry or the WINDOWS folder which I am happy about.

I have determined that its a boot problem with my OS and it probably has something to do with the BIOS settings.

I am wondering do you think setting the BIOS settings back to their defaults will solve the Startup error?

Please post back and let me know. I would greatly appreciate any more help on how to resolve this issue. Thanks!

 

Hi all,
I did a repair install on my OS and it fixed the Startup Error and the Broken User Account Link so I am very happy. I greatly appreciate all the suggestions on this forum. Thank you very much WindowsBBS.