XP won't boot

[hoops22]

Hi,
New to the forum and have a problem with my computer. Its a dell latitude 5400, about 6 years old. Worked fine until recently when it starts, the Windows logo appears and then goes directly to the screen that says something like "Windows did not start successfully" Anything I chose on that screen (safe mode, start windows normally) goes directly to the picture below. If i click the x, nothing happens; just stays a blue or black screen.

I am hoping to fix this, or at least be able to retrieve some of my files off the computer. Any help would be great.

 

[Elizabeth23]

have you tried to restart again, by powering off and then turning on??

if so what happens then??

you can remove the drive and slave to another pc to get files or burn a copy of hiren's boot cd and boot from that to view your drive.

what happens when you turn off pc, restart and immediately start tapping F8, does the advanced boot menu come up and let you boot to safe mode??

 

[hoops22]

I've turned it on/off many times and same thing happens. Same "windows has encountered an error" when tapping the f8 key.

I am not familiar with removing a hard drive or what hirens boot cd even is. Is there a how to or anything written up I can follow to get my files off?

Thanks

 

[Elizabeth23]

This will require some knowledge of your pc and windows, which if you are not comfortable doing, then you should just take your pc to a shop.

1. run recovery console, you will have to get to a working pc and burn a cd with the recovery console, OR a flash drive with a recovery console depending on if your pc is a desktop or a laptop:

Courtesy of Jose Ibarra:
Anywho, to make a Hiren's boot CD, do this

I am going to recommend you use Hiren's boot CD (it will also go on a USB drive).

This is good for you because it has many more tools on it that on the XP Recovery Console CD, does not care about your Administrator passwords and you will not have to futz around in your BIOS if any afflicted system has SATA drives - Hiren's can deal with that.

You will have a whole bunch of cool tools that you don't have in the XP Recovery Console... a registry editor, password resetter, and a desktop that looks like Windows XP so you will feel comfortable maneuvering.

You can also easily copy your personal data (documents, images, music.) to an external drive.

From a working system, first download Hiren's Boot CD from here (it is a substantial download but worth it):

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ (look near the bottom of the page, do not click on any ads).
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/burning/
Instructions

Unzip the Hiren's to some folder where you can find it. There is a Hiren's.BootCD..iso in there that you are going to need next.

Hiren's has instructions to make a bootable USB that you can use, but it requires you to first burn the .iso to a CD and some other steps, so I suggest another way...

Download RUFUS 1.20 from here (read some stuff on the page so you can know more about it):

http://rufus.akeo.ie/

I will caution you to be careful that you don't accidentally format any of your hard drives - be sure your USB stick is in and know what the drive letter is! This part always makes me a little nervous, so be careful.

Launch RUFUS and all the defaults should be okay, for the Device, choose your USB drive letter, Quick format, FAT32, label it if you want to and in the Format options box, click the little icon that looks like a CD and a window will open. Navigate that dialogue to point to the folder that contains the Hiren's.BootCD.15.iso that you unzipped earlier and the box should change to say ISO image (RUFUS understands the Hiren's ISO file).

Double check you have the right Device selected in the top (NOT you HDD) Click Start, acknowledge the warning and let it finish (it will take a little while) as it copies the files. The Hiren's ISO is also good size.

When RUFUS is done, it will say 'DONE' in the bottom.

Put the USB stick in the afflicted machine and reset/reboot and press whatever key you need to press to get to a boot menu where you can select the USB as the first boot device (that is F11 for me). If you don't see a boot menu choice, you will have to adjust your BIOS to boot from the USB first instead of the HDD.

When the Hiren's menu comes up, choose the Mini XP Mode and it will start loading (slowly from a USB drive) and eventually you should see a Windowsy looking desktop. You should recognize that part and feel comfortable, but it is not your desktop - it is the Hiren's desktop!

Remember: You did not boot on your hard disk - you booted into the Hiren's desktop


ABOVE for flash BELOW for cd:

Courtesy of Jose Ibarra
Make yourself a Hiren's Boot CD which you can download from here:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

The ZIP file is large, so the download will probably take a little while to complete bit it is worth it. Then unzip the download to extract the Hirens.BootCD.ISO file that will be used to create your new bootable CD.

Creating a bootable CD from a .ISO file is not the same as just copying the .ISO file to a blank CD. You have to use software that understands how to burn a .ISO file to a CD to create a bootable CD.

In the Hiren's ZIP file are the BurnToCD.cmd file that you can double click to launch it, but I have never used it and prefer to use ImgBurn.

If you need a free and easy CD burning software package, here is a popular free program:

http://www.imgburn.com/

When installing ImgBurn, DO NOT install anything from UniBlue or the Ask toolbar (never install the ASK toolbar for anything).

Here are some instructions for ImgBurn:

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61

It would be a good idea to test your new bootable CD on a computer that is working.

You may need to adjust the computer BIOS settings to use the CD ROM drive as the first boot device instead of the hard disk.

These adjustments are made before Windows tries to load. If you miss it, you will have to reboot the system again.

When booting on the Hiren's CD you will see a menu of options. Choose the Mini XP option. Then it will appear that Windows is being loaded and you will be presented with a desktop that has the look and feel of the Windows Explorer interface you are already used to using.

One way to check the disk for errors is to open My Computer and right click your afflicted drive and choose Properties, Tools, Error-checking, Check Now... put a check mark in both the boxes and then Start.

Sometimes that doesn't work, so you can also click Start, Run and in the box enter:

cmd

Click OK to open a Command Prompt window and enter the following command (assuming XP is installed on your C drive)

chkdsk c: /r

This disk checking can take a long time (perhaps several to many hours) depending on the size of the volume, the amount of data on the volume and what the disk checking finds to do.
Let chkdsk finish and correct any problems it might find.

Depending on the the speed of your system, the size of the volume, the amount of data on the volume and what chkdsk finds to do, it may take a long time for chkdsk with error correction to complete (several to many hours) or it may appear to be 'stuck'. Be patient. If the HDD light is still flashing, chkdsk is doing something so don't interrupt it. It will finish eventually one way or the other. Keep an eye on the percentage amount to be sure it is still making progress. It may even appear to go backwards sometimes.

You may have to run the chkdsk c: /r more than once.

===================

you should run checkdisk but if you want to just get your files off, you can use hirens for this also.

 

[Elizabeth23]

reply no 2, this is the recovery console instructions, but if your drive has sata drives then you should use hiren's which does not care if you have sata or not.

Here's how to make a bootable xp recovery console cd
Courtesy of JoseIbarra
Since many folks do not have a genuine bootable XP installation CD - either because they never got one with their store bought system, they lost it, broke it, scratched it, the dog ate it, etc. it usually is a dead end to suggest using the XP installation CD (since most people don't have one).

Suggesting it usually just results in wasted email cycles so it make sense to assume that nobody has one. nobody has any friends with one either and contacting your hardware vendor to send you one is also going to be a waste of time.
Instead of suggesting things that will only work some of the time for some people sometimes maybe, I would rather suggest things that are usually going to work all the time for all folks.
This will let you make a bootable XP Recovery Console CD (no XP media required).
If you have no bootable XP media (or are not sure what you have) create a bootable XP Recovery Console CD and be sure.

This is not the same as any recovery disks that might have come with a store bought system.

You can make a bootable XP Recovery Console CD by downloading an ISO file and burning it to a CD.

The bootable ISO image file you need to download is called:

xp_rec_con.iso

Download the ISO file from my OneDrive (everybody has a OneDrive for sharing files):

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=EC673DF6F8DFEE84&id=EC673DF6F8DFEE84!109&authkey=!AEMs5lwt9Todokc


When you see the files available for download, you may not see the file extension (.exe, .dll, .cpl, .sys, .zip, etc.), but when you download them they will have the correct extension.

When you download the file (especially if you use Internet Explorer), when you get a chance to save the file, your browser may not save the file with an extension (like .exe, .dll, .cpl, .sys, .zip, etc.) so you will have to manually add the proper extension to the file when you download the file before you save it.

You can download the file with no extension and then rename the file to add the proper extension. You don't want to try to use a file called xp _rec_con when the file name really needs to be called xp_rec_con.iso (if the downloaded file has no extension you will have to change the name of the file to add the proper extension to get it to work.

Use a new CD and this free and easy program to burn your ISO file and create your bootable CD:

http://www.imgburn.com/

Like many third party programs you might install, the ImgBurn installation defaults to installing things you probably don't want installed on your system in the form of extra Internet browser toolbars or may make other adjustments to your browser. You don't want that so you have to pay attention during the installation.

When clicking through the installation screens be sure to pay attention to the screens and always choose a Custom install and UNcheck the following (or any other things like it):

UNcheck:

Install the AVG toolbar and set AVG Secure Search as my default search provider
Set AVG Secure Search as my homepage and newly opened tabs

Choose custom installation again and UNcheck the following:

Uncheck:
Install QuickShare

Here are some instructions for ImgBurn:

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61

It would be a good idea to test your bootable CD on a computer that is working.

You may need to adjust the computer BIOS settings to use the CD ROM drive as the first boot device instead of the hard disk. These adjustments are made before Windows tries to load. If you miss it, you will have to reboot the system again.

When you boot on the CD, follow the prompts:

Press any key to boot from CD...

The Windows Setup... will proceed.

Press 'R' to enter the Recovery Console.

Select the installation you want to access (usually 1: C:\WINDOWS)

You may be asked to enter the Administrator password (usually empty).

You should be in the C:\WINDOWS folder. This is the same as the C:\WINDOWS folder you see in explorer.

The Recovery Console allows basic file commands like: copy, rename, replace, delete, cd, chkdsk, fixboot, fixmbr, etc.

For a list of Recovery Console commands, enter help at the prompt or read about the XP Recovery Console here:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...ocs/en-us/recovery_console_cmds.mspx?mfr=true

A good idea before starting things is to first verify the integrity of your file system using the chkdsk command.

From the command prompt window run the chkdsk command on the drive where Windows is installed to try to repair any problems on the afflicted drive.

Running chkdsk is fine even if it doesn't find any problems. It will not hurt anything to run it.

Assuming your boot drive is C, run the following command:

chkdsk C: /r

Let chkdsk finish and correct any problems it might find.

It may take a long time for chkdsk to complete or it may appear to be 'stuck'. Be patient. If the HDD light is still flashing, chkdsk is doing something. Keep an eye on the percentage amount to be sure it is still making progress. It may even appear to go backwards sometimes.

You should run chkdsk /r again until it finds no errors to correct.

Remove the CD and type 'exit' to leave the RC and restart the computer.

You do not have to adjust the BIOS again to boot on the HDD since the CD will not be present.