Stuck at Windows is starting up...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jason Piercey
  • Start date Start date
J

Jason Piercey

Had some power issues in the last couple of days (ice storms, etc..)
and now my desktop won't fully boot. Goes through all the normal
motions and then stops at "Windows is starting up..." and will sit at
that state for as long as you care to wait.

The boot partition is one of 4 partitions on this drive on a XP Pro system.
I have not tried any repair tactics yet. Should I boot to a secondary drive
and try to access the original boot partition (just to get a little bit of
data I
wish to keep, then reinstall the OS), or should I try a repair install via
the
installation CD? Or something else? This is a SATA drive, if that matters.

Thanks for any pointers.
 
Jason Piercey wrote:
> Had some power issues in the last couple of days (ice storms, etc..)
> and now my desktop won't fully boot. Goes through all the normal
> motions and then stops at "Windows is starting up..." and will sit at
> that state for as long as you care to wait.
>
> The boot partition is one of 4 partitions on this drive on a XP Pro system.
> I have not tried any repair tactics yet. Should I boot to a secondary drive
> and try to access the original boot partition (just to get a little bit of
> data I
> wish to keep, then reinstall the OS), or should I try a repair install via
> the
> installation CD? Or something else? This is a SATA drive, if that matters.
>
> Thanks for any pointers.
>
>

Can you get into Safe Mode? If so, go there and clean up all temp files.

Alias
 
Safe mode also gets stuck at the same point, as does using
"Last known good configuration"


"Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjrf9f$fd5$1@aioe.org...

> Can you get into Safe Mode? If so, go there and clean up all temp files.
 
PS: I get past the XP splash screen with the progress bar. I
am referring to the baby-blue screen "Windows is starting up..."
before you reach the desktop.
 
On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:16:12 -0600, "Jason Piercey" <Jason@atreng.com>
wrote:

>Had some power issues in the last couple of days (ice storms, etc..)
>and now my desktop won't fully boot. Goes through all the normal
>motions and then stops at "Windows is starting up..." and will sit at
>that state for as long as you care to wait.
>
>The boot partition is one of 4 partitions on this drive on a XP Pro system.
>I have not tried any repair tactics yet. Should I boot to a secondary drive
>and try to access the original boot partition (just to get a little bit of
>data I
>wish to keep, then reinstall the OS), or should I try a repair install via
>the
>installation CD? Or something else? This is a SATA drive, if that matters.
>
>Thanks for any pointers.
>
Do a repair install
Pat
 
pat wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:16:12 -0600, "Jason Piercey" <Jason@atreng.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Had some power issues in the last couple of days (ice storms, etc..)
>> and now my desktop won't fully boot. Goes through all the normal
>> motions and then stops at "Windows is starting up..." and will sit at
>> that state for as long as you care to wait.
>>
>> The boot partition is one of 4 partitions on this drive on a XP Pro system.
>> I have not tried any repair tactics yet. Should I boot to a secondary drive
>> and try to access the original boot partition (just to get a little bit of
>> data I
>> wish to keep, then reinstall the OS), or should I try a repair install via
>> the
>> installation CD? Or something else? This is a SATA drive, if that matters.
>>
>> Thanks for any pointers.
>>
> Do a repair install
> Pat

Which may or may not fix the problem as the problem may be a hardware
device that got screwed by the storm. Personally, I would run an Ubuntu
Live CD first to see if the hardware is OK.

Alias
 
Ubuntu Live CD? What is that?



"Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjrkls$vc3$1@aioe.org...

> Personally, I would run an Ubuntu Live CD first to see if the hardware is
> OK.
 
Jason Piercey wrote:
> Ubuntu Live CD? What is that?

Got to www.ubuntu.com and download the ISO and burn it to a CD. Set the
BIOS in the affected computer to boot from the CDROM first. Insert the
Ubuntu CD and click on "Install" when a menu appears, although it won't
install anything. If and when the Ubuntu desktop appears, test the
internet connection by opening Firefox and going to some web site. If
the Ubuntu desktop doesn't appear, you probably have hardware problems.
Note, that doing this will not affect your Windows installation at all.

Alias
>
>
>
> "Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjrkls$vc3$1@aioe.org...
>
>> Personally, I would run an Ubuntu Live CD first to see if the hardware is
>> OK.
>
>
 
Downloading it now. So there is no specific test for hardware?
If it boots then all hardware is good? If there is a hardware
defect/problem, I assume I'll need to pull each piece from the
system one at a time to determine what is at fault?



"Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjrn00$6oo$1@aioe.org...

> Got to www.ubuntu.com and download the ISO and burn it to a CD. Set the
> BIOS in the affected computer to boot from the CDROM first. Insert the
> Ubuntu CD and click on "Install" when a menu appears, although it won't
> install anything. If and when the Ubuntu desktop appears, test the
> internet connection by opening Firefox and going to some web site. If the
> Ubuntu desktop doesn't appear, you probably have hardware problems. Note,
> that doing this will not affect your Windows installation at all.
 
Jason Piercey wrote:
> Downloading it now. So there is no specific test for hardware?
> If it boots then all hardware is good? If there is a hardware
> defect/problem, I assume I'll need to pull each piece from the
> system one at a time to determine what is at fault?

I believe you can use it to test both memory and the hard drive. I'm
hoping, for your sake, that it's Windows, not hardware. The same thing
happened to me (storm, lightening, power failure) and a reinstall of
Windows on a new hard drive fixed it. If it boots up, it's probably
Windows, not hardware.

Alias
>
>
>
> "Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjrn00$6oo$1@aioe.org...
>
>> Got to www.ubuntu.com and download the ISO and burn it to a CD. Set the
>> BIOS in the affected computer to boot from the CDROM first. Insert the
>> Ubuntu CD and click on "Install" when a menu appears, although it won't
>> install anything. If and when the Ubuntu desktop appears, test the
>> internet connection by opening Firefox and going to some web site. If the
>> Ubuntu desktop doesn't appear, you probably have hardware problems. Note,
>> that doing this will not affect your Windows installation at all.
>
>
 
Jason Piercey wrote:
> Downloading it now. So there is no specific test for hardware?
> If it boots then all hardware is good? If there is a hardware
> defect/problem, I assume I'll need to pull each piece from the
> system one at a time to determine what is at fault?

BTW, if it does load, you can use it to back up your data to an external
hard drive.

Alias
>
>
>
> "Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjrn00$6oo$1@aioe.org...
>
>> Got to www.ubuntu.com and download the ISO and burn it to a CD. Set the
>> BIOS in the affected computer to boot from the CDROM first. Insert the
>> Ubuntu CD and click on "Install" when a menu appears, although it won't
>> install anything. If and when the Ubuntu desktop appears, test the
>> internet connection by opening Firefox and going to some web site. If the
>> Ubuntu desktop doesn't appear, you probably have hardware problems. Note,
>> that doing this will not affect your Windows installation at all.
>
>
 
Thanks.



"Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjro7b$9a8$2@aioe.org...

> BTW, if it does load, you can use it to back up your data to an external
> hard drive.
 
Well, it didn't boot properly, got a bunch of I/O errors when
starting up. I did not run the hard drive or memory checks.

I ended up installing XP on a spare drive and used it as a boot.
All my data was accessible on the original drive. I'll just back
that up and go with a clean install on the original drive.



"Alias" <alias@aliasmail.com> wrote in message news:fjro2n$9a8$1@aioe.org...


> If it boots up, it's probably Windows, not hardware.
 
Well,

Turns out the boot drive was, more than likely, fine to begin
with. It was a secondary drive attached to an SATA PCI
card that was causing the problems. I did do a repair install
but not sure that was really necessary as I didn't notice the
machine wouldn't boot with the secondary drive attached
until after the repair. If I unplug it the system boots, other-
wise no boot. 400gb of drive all wasted :(
 
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