Can't get XP to start

  • Thread starter Thread starter Judy
  • Start date Start date
J

Judy

We were defragmenting the other night and the power went
out. Not sure how far it had gotten with the
degragmenting when this happened. Ever since we can not
get XP to start. It starts, the XP screen comes up and
then it shuts down. No matter what mode we try we get
the same results. What do we do?
 
Hey Judy,

This is a fairly complex problem, so let's start with the
basics and we're going to assume there is valuable data on
the hard drive. Loosing power is bad for the hard drive,
but the surge when it comes back on can be fatal.
Hopefully you had a proper surge protector (not those $12
ones) and the hard drive is not destroyed; but just has
some bad sectors on it. If none of the F8 options at boot
up works, you can try using the RECOVERY CONSOLE. The
recovery console is initiated by inserting your XP Cd and
rebooting at the computer, and choosing recover from the
setup program. This will prompt you for the admin password
and then drop you into a text based environment to make
changes.. (advanced users)

If this doesn't work, there are some good software options
out there such as Winternal's, but those are out of the
price range unless your a tech shop ($1,000). So, try
taking the hard drive out of the machine and putting it in
another XP machine and then running chkdsk to determine
whether the HD is bad. If it's not bad, you can recover
your data off of it on this second PC. Even if you had
NTFS permissions, the admin for the other PC can take
ownership of all the files and copy them. If the files
were encrypted however, you won't be able to recover them.

After that you would need to format the hard drive and
reinstall everything. (Assuming the hard drive isn't
permanently damaged.)

This is just one way to go about it, based upon the limited
info available to me. If these suggestions are beyond your
abilities I would suggest you find a CompTIA A+ certified
shop in your area to perform these recovery functions for you.

To prevent this in the future, consider getting a
Uniterruptable Power Supply (UPS). Low end models start at
around $120. I live in the Tampa area, so with the storms
we get I consider mine a vital component of my system.

If I can help out more let me know.

-James
 
We were defragmenting the other night and the power went
out. Not sure how far it had gotten with the
degragmenting when this happened. Ever since we can not
get XP to start. It starts, the XP screen comes up and
then it shuts down. No matter what mode we try we get
the same results. What do we do?
Click to expand...

Judy,

Boot from the Windows XP install CD - or system recovery CD - and try
repair system. And pray - really hard. A power failure while
defragging is something you might not recover from.

And get a good UPS so this won't happen again.

Cheers,

Chuck
I hate spam - PLEASE get rid of the spam before emailing me!
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
 
This comes in the form of closing the barn door etc and so forth. I
apologize.

In future partition your drive so that programs and data are on separate
logical drives (partitions) from the system. This will help when a problem
like this happens you will lose whichever logical drive you are
defragmenting at the time. As far as your data is concerned save it or
backup off computer either to a zip drive or a cdrw. That way at least you
can recover the most important information - your data.

I also suggest a backup power source. In order for that to work you have to
be sitting at the computer when the power goes out or run as fast as you can
to close the defrag program.

The other suggestions are good. Don't be too upset I think this happens to
all of us at one time or another. That why they sell lots of BackUp power
sources.

The best of luck.
 
Was disc drive using FAT or NTFS filesystem. If it arrived
in FAT and you did not convert it to NTFS, then power loss can
corrupt drive and even erase existing files. Just another
reason why systems using the obsolete FAT filesystem so
desperately need a UPS.

If you were using NTFS, then the drive repairs itself -
automatically. However if using FAT, then the repair
procedure is different. Before anyone can accurately be
helpful, the type of drive must first be defined - FAT (that
was obsolete even when Windows 98 was released) or NTFS.
 
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