Boot problem?

This is not my machine thankfully, so I may not have all of the necessary info but any help would be appreciated. Computer running Windows XP Professional has been operating with no problems till today when it froze while downloading email on Outlook. Norton Antivirus was also running checking incoming email. Computer was shut down improperly and rebooted. After the Windows XP screen was displayed the screen goes blank (Black). User went through boot diagnostic setup and set computer to boot from C drive. Computer booted and worked properly for the better part of the day. After proper shutdown, computer reboots to Windows XP screen and goes black. Tried the boot diagnostic trick with no luck. Any ideas where to start looking? Could this be a virus that made it past Norton? Thanks

 

If I'm reading you correctly, at this point the PC will not boot from the hard drive at all.

In that case, boot from the CD to the Recovery Console and the command line. When there
fixboot followed by
chkdsk /r and see if it will boot after that process finishes.

Once it is running, do a full scan using Housecall (free, online scan) or one of the other similar ones.

Then start~run~sfc /scannow (note the space between sfc /)

You might also want to take a look at the event logs for more information since all the above suggestions are very general and while (hopefully) they may get your friend running, they don't really address the original cause of the problem.

 

Newt,

Thanks for your help and suggestions. You are correct that the computer isn't booting at all now. I'll pass this info on to my friend and see if this gets her up and running again. Since the computer is used for business I'm sure that finding the root cause and correcting it is what she wishes. She has enough problems at work without the computer acting up. Thanks again.