Today one of our computers decided that it didn't want to boot up. When you switch it on a screen appears to ask if you want to start up in safe mode or continue with last know settings that worked. When continuing with last known settings the boot gets as far as the Windows loading screen and then hangs and starts all over again.

We were having some work done on the office today and the electricity was cut a couple of times. After this we had the boot up problem. The computer is connected to a UPS box so the power cut shouldn't really affect the computer so maybe it's just coincidence.

The computer is only months old too. Any ideas would be appreciated.

it sounds to me like your boot.ini file is corrupt, usually happens due to power downs without shutting down correctly.

Do a search on another pc for hirens pc boot disc and burn to cd

Then reboot bad pc and boot from cd

select the boot options and restore boot ini file.

I am hoping this should fix it.

start up in safe mode, run disk utilities which will start on reboot and you might be ok again. Last known good only works if their is no issue but your pc rebooted itself

you can change the boot files manually if you can boot up off another hard drive ,and make your primary drive a secondary

see microsoft knowledge base article 307545

you didnt say whether it boots into safe mode okay without restarting

if it does boot into safe mode okay then do a system restore to a couple of days ago

that would be you best bet

i been getting this message when mine just switches its self off when using my lap top on battery only power(but thats another story)...always selected 'safe mode' and everything starts ok.

EssexGaz wrote:you didnt say whether it boots into safe mode okay without restarting

if it does boot into safe mode okay then do a system restore to a couple of days ago

that would be you best bet

I agree with above, this is your safest bet for starters.

Also on the UPS, it is worth checking that this is correctly set-up as doesn't sound so. The UPS should provide enough power to allow the servers / pc to do a safe shut down.

I too would have thought booting up in safe mode would be your first course of action, if you are able to, though you may already have tried that one or not be able to get that far?

Something of a side issue, but I understand that UPS will not protect your PC from power surges, spikes etc, if it is not properly earthed.

why not reinstall your O/S CD and do a repair maybe this will correct it since it let you go back in system restore give it a try that generally works for me good luck Ron / Jun

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I still haven't figured out the problem. I'm unable to boot up in any mode so I guess it's a boot file problem as BB suggested.

I downloaded hirens pc boot disc, selected boot up from CD CD but nothing happened, the CD kicked in but returned to the start up screen.

A computer chap dropped in today and told us that we may interrupted the windows update, which could have corrupted some files. He suggested installing windows again, but since he was a little pushed for time he said that he'd have a look again tomorrow.

Is there anyway I can connect to this hard drive to backup the important files? Then I can just wipe the disk and start again. Or maybe its just a case of repairing a broken file.

FYI the UPS is working ok, but I will need to check the grounding issue.

Lee, you could always put the hard drive into another pc as the "slave" disk (the switch settings are sometimes a bit tricky if they are not the same HD model). Then you should be able to boot the PC using its normal master disk. If the only issue the disk actually has is windows start up then all the files should be viewable & you could copy to CD or master disk.
You could even try overwriting the windows files on the slave with the good copy from the master, but there are an awful lot of them....

That's an idea, maybe I could connect the hard drive up to my laptop and overwrite the 'boot ini' file with a working one on my system and try again.

Cheers.

EDIT: Just tried it but the connections are completely different to the other computers.

you are cracking me your going to play games with master slave settings on your H/D hooking up to your PC when the simple thing to do is put your win/XP disk in the pc and follow the instructions until it says do you want to repair hit R and it will reinstall your drivers if you lost any and offer you the option of doing a restore back to a prev. date but since I suggested it you will ignore me like all the mods do but it your call
have fun cutting of your toe when all you have is a hang nail have a nice day

aznyron wrote:you will ignore me like all the mods do but it your call

Ron, I'm not ignoring you. I just don't have the Windows CD to boot up from.

Lee, I'm nor an expert on these things, but I have heard it said that if you want to recover any of the data on your hard drive, don't reformat it, until you have done so.

Again I am not sure but I think re-installing Windows in effect wipes your hard drive, so it might be a good idea to take your hard drive to a shop, or connect it to another PC in order to recover your data first, before you try re-installing Windows or a new version.

The following idea was suggested to me in the past, when I had a problem installing Vista SP1 and my laptop crashed:-

Assuming you had an original Windows version and have the serial number etc, but not the CD, - buy another cheap copy locally, install that and then input your original serial number at the appropriate time. In fact I never needed to do that, as I discovered that my (partitioned) D drive had a back up/restore section.

Hopefully BKKButcher will pick this up a bit later on today and clarify any points.