Technical Difficulties: Windows won't start up

[BOZ]

*yawn*

i've messed around with the machine a little bit, but haven't had the energy at the right times to really get into it. suffice to say, i haven't changed any settings yet that produced meaningful results. i imagine if i can't get it working through the msconfig, i'll try something else suggested here, and failing that i'll hand it over to my friend to see what he can do for it (reinstalling windows, perhaps).

 

[SteelDraco]

I would just pop in the Windows CD, reboot, and choose the Repair a Windows Installation option when that comes up. Sounds like one of your drivers is acting screwy, and that's what's causing your problems. Repairing the installation should give you a clean set, and will probably get you up and running again.

After that, personally I would recommend backing up your data and reformatting. Then again, I always do that after a bad spyware problem, just because then you KNOW it's gone, and not going to come back and cause problems for you again.

 

[DethStryke]

I would just pop in the Windows CD, reboot, and choose the Repair a Windows Installation option when that comes up. Sounds like one of your drivers is acting screwy, and that's what's causing your problems. Repairing the installation should give you a clean set, and will probably get you up and running again.

This is a little confusing process wise.

There are two "repair" options when you boot to an XP disk. The first you are given will put you into Recovery Console. This is not useful for what you're trying to do at the moment.

The second one is found by first choosing "Install Windows XP" which scans for XP installations. Then choose the Repair installation option you're given, which launches into the overlayed setup which will restore all of your system files to original. I would copy your Browser Favorites, anything in Desktop and My Documents to another folder on C: that you name yourself just in case, but it should keep all of your files and programs by doing this.