Windows XP Startup Error 'Circling the Drain'

Hello! I am a disabled shut in with debilitating lung disease, and my brain doesn't always get enough oxygen or energy to coalesce thoughts into what I need to say. So please bear with me.

My poor old clunker laptop won't allow me to start it up to any usefulness. It's an old HP Pavilion dv5220us Entertainment Notebook PC that I bought back in 2006. I haven't used it for internet access in years. I mainly use it for photography stuff from my DSLR. The hard drive is nearly full, but over the past couple of years, I've been slowly trying to get some things transferred over to an external hard drive to alleviate some of its issues. Despite all of its clogged full memory, it is still a much faster computer than this dinky eMachines we got in 2009 (also Windows XP). I hadn't turned the laptop on in at least two months. I think I've turned it on for something since the new year began.

Anyway, we spent an entire week without power in April, and even when it came back on, it went right back off. It killed my mother's keyboard on her Windows 8 HP laptop. I also noticed that unlike power outages in the past, this eMachines when it would reboot from the power returning, it would throw up a dos screen requiring F1 to actually boot up. It did this several times. It's done that only a couple of times in the prior 10-11 years from loss of electricity. But it has so far booted right up with no apparent issues. So when I went to turn on my laptop this morning and it had the same screen, I didn't think much of it. It appeared to act normally. Made all the usual sounds from the fan and hard drive stuff. Then when it got to the Windows welcome screen, it threw up an error on a blue dos screen that disappeared much too quickly to read!

Okay, so it seemed to be restarting. Then it happened again. I got ready with the old radio-defunct BlackBerry for a photo and got the screen captured. Still super fast. I finally managed to get to an F8 screen at some stage, and I tried doing a Safe Mode. No good, it still went bonkers exactly the same way. I eventually got into an F10 menu and tried to see what was there. The clock was back at the factory date and time, just as the eMachines desktop's clock always is after a power failure. I had it run a self check on the hard drive, I believe it was, and it failed it. Several tries and always it failed. Not surprised, but I have no idea about how these sorts of things work, and there were no further options that I could see. So I left that menu behind to see if it would circle the drain again. And of course it did. I got another photo and typed up the text from both. The numbers are slightly different. I will provide it below.

_________

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disabled BIOS memory options such a caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xDD947000, 0x00000001, 0x8063EB6A, 0x00000000) [Photo 1]
*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xDC387000, 0x00000001, 0x8063EB6A, 0x00000000) [Photo 2]
*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xDA070000, 0x00000001, 0x8063EB6A, 0x00000000) [Quick Glance]

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

__________

I am not technically savvy in this sort of thing. I'm not stupid–my degree is in chemistry and I did very well–but most computer stuff has never been particularly intuitive for me. I would have needed to go to college in the subject to understand it all. And now with my serious illness, I am easily overwhelmed and confused trying to search for terms via search engine.

I have frankly been wondering if my poor laptop would even turn on at all, but this error business circling over and over just makes my blood boil. Thank you all for any help you can give me.

 

if a restart does not clear the problem, then the next step is to run checkdisk


http://forums.whatthetech.com/index.php?showtopic=102348

How to perform checkdisk

if you do not have Recovery Console installed, then run from the start menu

go to start, run, type in cmd

in cmd type in chkdsk c: /r and press enter notice space between k and c and between : and/

type Y for yes and press enter

type exit and press enter

restart pc, allow checkdisk to finish and run again

this is a lengthy process depending on the size of your harddrive, the percentages will fluctuate, this is normal, you can view report in the event viewer.

go to start>run> and type in eventvwr.msc, click on the applications directory, and in the right hand panel choose winlogon.

you can also run this if you have an xp cd, go to the bios, set the cd drive to boot first and then boot to the cd and choose R

it will ask for password, just press enter,
it will ask which you want to use, it should say 1. windows, enter 1 and press enter and then type in chkdsk c: /r

chkdsk should be run at least twice

 

Also, if you want to be able to read the information on the blue screen of death, get into an F8 screen again and select "Disable automatic restart on system error." This will prevent the computer from restarting when it has a blue screen of death.