fails to boot! (fails in safe mode too!)

Hi,
Purchased a new dell dimension 9200 less than a month ago.
Running xp pro, machine networked with 3 others to share a printer.

Machine was working fine yesterday. Transferred a load of image files and worked in adobe bride all day. Ran a virus scan before bed. Shut down machine last night. No problem

Went to boot up this morning and the machine doesnt boot. It doenst even get to the windows xp loading screen. The screen stays black! I then tried to boot in safe mode and the boot stalls after the system32/drivers/mountmgr.sys line is printed to the screen.

Does anyone know what is happening? Why it would do this? And what the remedy would be?

I found this posting http://www.mcse.ms/message1634824.html . Someone who has a similar problem to me. Before i charge ahead i wanted more opinions from you guys.

Thanks
Andy

 

Have you tried "Last known good configuration" in the Advanced boot Options (f8) screen?

 

Hi,
Forgot to mention that! But yes i did try that also. Same result

Only thing remotely strange yesterday was adobe bridge cs3 crashed a few times. I shut down bridge and restared. I was also trying to create/ load a new color profile for my monitor via photoshop as instructed by my print lab

 

Try the command prompt offered. If you get it run the chkdsk /f command. Perhaps it can "fix" some drive errors and get you back up.

If perchance you can't get to the command prompt with the f8 method, you can boot to the XP install CD to access the Recovery Console and choose the "R" option to repair your existing installation. Then you can run chkdsk /r from that command line. You can also run System Restore from the Recovery Console. I hope you had it enabled.

 

I wonder if the antivirus has made some change to the disk system.

If you can get to Safe Mode, try undoing any changes made by the antivirus. If you have a bootable CD for the antivirus, try running that and see if there are some sort of "restore" options.

Matt

 

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Turns out it was a corrupt operating system file. Not sure how it happened.
I entered sytem boot (F12) and completed a hard drive diagnostic which it passed.

So i then placed in the XP operating system disk and did a chkdsk /r repair.

Seems to have solved my problem.

Thanks again