Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Microsoft Madness!

I think he did the window's repair already.
Personlly, I'd go with the 2nd hard drive. I've had boot issues with 2000 and xp and when it gets this bad, I slave the drive to another and try to pull the data I want. After that I do a complete fresh install. XP is by far the best OS from MS (and pretty good overall), but it still has problems.

jr

I work in the IT at the Principal Financial Group, I'll check with some of my IT contacts for areas that have migrated to XP to see what I can find out...Randy

yeah at this point 2nd hd fresh load or computer shop and have them fresh load it for you. XP is a great os but with so many manufactures of soft and hardware ms can't be compatible with everything.sorry you are one of the unlucky ones. do you know what cpu you have or how old your pc is.

The MS level one folks must really stink if they didn't have you try the option that says "Disable automatic restart on system failure".

You computer should now simply crash and sit there. Hopefully, you will see some meaningful error message to get you started.


Good luck,

I'll check back later to see how you're doing...

Here's another vote for doing the second hard drive thing. Even if you can find a cheaper smaller drive than your existing, you'll be able to back up and then us it as a secondary drive once you've finished reformatting/reinstalling. One word of advice, if you go this route, make sure you do not boot up and install back to the old drive while the new drive is attached. I did this recently and found that the boot drive was assiged to f: instead of c:. Since it's the boot drive, you cannot change the letter, which leaves you with one remedy.....reformat and reinstall....again.

As far as your problem goes, I cannot speak too much to SP2, as I have not upgraded. I will say that it is alarming that you are not getting to the splash screen. I'm not super well-versed on the boot process, but it sounds like this may not be a simple windows thing. You may have to get advice from a stronger geek than me, but you may have a problem w/ your drive boot sector or even worse, your BIOS....not sure.

Here's a guide that I found that shows you the boot sequence of a PC. You may want to follow along w/ it and see where in the sequence you think your PC is dying. Hopefully, you don't have one of those PC that covers all this up w/ their damn company name splash screens (big pet peeve).

I recently had an issue where my computer would continue to hand at the XP splash screen. I repaired the boot sector, the master boot record, and replaced the Windows boot files and still could not get it to boot successfully. After talking to the IT guys at work, they informed me that it sounds like a bad boot sector on the drive. They said that it can be fixed, but they strongly suggested that I consider replacing the drive and shifting that one to a secondary drive, because drives w/ bad sectors continue to develop bad sectors once they've started.

So, went down to BB and found a 80GB WD hard drive for $30 after rebates and I'm good to go.

Hope I've not convoluted the issue. Just want to make sure you don't spin the wheels on fixing Windows if your issue is happening prior to boot.

Good Luck

This entire thread is specifically why I have loved my Mac since 1989. . Simple, effective, easy to maintain very little issue with viruses/attacks. The old "..pry it out of my cold, dead hands.." applies here.

Having said that, I use a PC at work and because my wife (the teacher) ties the Mac up for 10 mos./year, I grudgingly got a PC for the den. Picked up a great kit deal from TigerDirect (but that's another story).

Anyhow, the Mac just works. I find I must "work at" the PC. I also had XP and SP2 issues, so I feel your pain. Hang in there.

"pry it out of my cold, dead hands."
I'm with you Ray.

Wow, I'm impressed you've managed to keep it working for 15 years! That would make it what, a IIcx, IIci tops.

I was trying really hard not to go there...

Ken - yer killin' me!!!

Right now I've got the 17' Mac that looks like a lamp. Upgradeitis apparently runs through the common thread of MAN THINGS and all related to them!!! I have been looking at the G5 for a few months, but this HT hobby is keeping me broke.

Another area of things I don't need but really want one of. The iMac is functional and works well, so I'll likely keep it.

Problem solved!-kind of. All is almost right with the world again but I tell ya it wasn't fun. Went through 3 Microsoft techs before one of them woke up an figured out how to do it without loosing everything. He did a second XP install without completely wiping the hard drive, but don't ask me how we got to this point. I feel like I've just emerged from the computer maze from hell-it's all just a blurr now.

I still have much of the stuff that was stored in "my docs.", "my pics." etc. Had to reinstall drivers and programs but I didn't loose everything. MX-Editor for my remote control was lost but thats not really a bit deal.

Norton Antivirus wouldn't install on the new XP install so I just spent another 2 1/2 hours with a Norton service tech. The Norton guy really knew what he was doing and the fix probably would have gone a little faster but his broken english was so poor that I had him repeating almost everything.

A great big hug and a kiss........maybe scratch the kiss......to all who offered advice and all the other member on this board. You guys & gals(sonic) are terrific.