Cant Boot into XP

August 16th, 2005, 4:55 pm

The story:-

Firstly I defraged my drive, after the defrag XP Home took about 10mins to boot up, many progs wouldn't function Windows Explorer slow as a snail, although Internet Explorer functioned ok.

Tried lots of options to no avail, so decided I would re-install from CD or even re-format if necessary, couldn't do it from Desktop as it said installed version was newer than the one on the Rom, booted from CD get error message:-

STOP 0x0000008E etc
setup.dd.sys

Message indicates possible bad ram, started sodding around with Ram sticks, now wont boot up at all not even safe mode, last known config or normal, hit the button on these options and it just re-boots itself back to the same screen again.

Any help before I lapse into insanity would be appreciated.

(Yes I do have a genuine Windows key)

August 18th, 2005, 4:13 pm

Either your Windows installation was corrupt or you have errors on the HDD that need chkdsk to be run to correct them - otherwise a defrag is simply not capable of causing the trouble you describe.

I would reinstall one known to be good RAM stick and boot up from it into Windows. If that fails then you've possibly got a corrupted MFT and you will need to efffect repairs from the Windows Recovery Console by booting from the CD-ROM and following the prompts.

You could also try booting from a 3rd party CD like "Hirens" or "UBCD" and running some of the utilities they contain to try and examine the problem with your system.

Unless you know what you're doing with WRC then don't go there, you should try simply reloading Windows from scratch and investing in some decent drive imaging software like Acronis True Image so that you dont get into the same mess another time!

August 20th, 2005, 5:59 am

Quote:

Either your Windows installation was corrupt or you have errors on the HDD that need chkdsk to be run to correct them - otherwise a defrag is simply not capable of causing the trouble you describe.

Windows had run quite happily for the last two months of a clean instal, the problem occured after re-booting immediatly after the de-frag.

Quote:

now wont boot up at

Quote:

I would reinstall one known to be good RAM stick and boot up from it into Windows. If that fails then you've possibly got a corrupted MFT and you will need to efffect repairs from the Windows Recovery Console by booting from the CD-ROM and following the prompts.

How?

Quote:

booted from CD get error message:-

STOP 0x0000008E etc
setup.dd.sys

Quote:

If that fails then you've possibly got a corrupted MFT and you will need to efffect repairs from the Windows Recovery Console by booting from the CD-ROM and following the prompts.

How?

Tks

August 20th, 2005, 6:54 am

to boot to the recovery console, pop in your windows xp cd and boot from it. then when you get to the prompt, instead of hitting "Enter" to install windows xp, hit "r" to go into the recovery console. then it'll prompt you for which installation of windows you want to boot into, there should only be one. it should look similar to this: 1. C:\Windows
lol so you type 1, then it will prompt you for the administrator password. if you have no administrator password, just hit enter. otherwise, you should be able to figure out what to do, lol. after you enter the admin password, you will be at a prompt. at this prompt type: chkdsk /r
let it run, it should / will take what seems to be forever. lol after its done, reboot and everything should be peachy keen. note: i said SHOULD and i do not take responsibility for anything that can / does happen to your computer. </end-disclaimer>

lol

August 20th, 2005, 8:06 am

Yes thats fine, however as I said in my original post:-

Quote:

booted from CD get error message:-

STOP 0x0000008E etc
setup.dd.sys

August 20th, 2005, 8:18 am

Quote:

Windows had run quite happily for the last two months of a clean instal, the problem occured after re-booting immediatly after the de-frag.

I am writing this message after rebooting immediately after a defrag and the booting took hardly 2 minutes.
So the problem is not with defrag.

Is that in laptop?
If so you can see this
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;833837

If not true then I will say that the RAM modules installed are faulty or you may have incompatible RAM installed.
Quite like this
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;315335

August 20th, 2005, 10:08 am

The latest:-

Purchased and installed in first slot brand new 256mb stick of ram.

1) Booting from HD- Goes to advanced screen (Boot in Safe Mode, Last known good config, Normal etc) tried all three of these options but it just re-boots back to this same screen again. Havent tried the remaining two options as I dont know how to use them.

2) Booting from Windows CD- shows windows Set-Up(in topleft of screen) along bottom of screen says "Windows is loading files" it continues to load various files for a couple of miniutes and then re-boots back to the advanced screen.