Windows Boot Aborted

A friend with WinXP (HE) was unfortunate enough to have her child turn off the electricity just before she was due to type in her logon details. When she turned the power on again and rebooted, she got a message saying that Windows has been shut down to prevent damage. She was given several options (and tried all of them) to boot into safe mode but was unsuccessful in accomplishing this. The original message saying that windows has been shut down just kept coming back. She tried the F8 procedure but the result was the same. Everything was fine before this problem, and the last thing that the computer was being used for was to watch WWF wrestling She has full protection from McAfee Security Suite. Can anyone suggest a resolution to this problem, please? Thank you.

 

I suggest you boot to the Windows CD and press R to go to the Recovery Console, then run the command
chkdsk /r
This will try to repair problems with the file system and surface of the HDD. If files cannot be restored it may require doing a repair of the Windows installation.

Matt

 

Thanks, Pete and Matt. I'll work on your suggestions and get back when I've resolved the problem. My friend tells me that she doesn't have a full WinXp installation disk, and I myself only have the Dell Reinstallation dvd. We may decide to go for the Dell Repair installation, but then she'll lose all her data, photographs, etc. Before that procedure I'll review all other possibilities. Thank you.