Boot Issues

[pcenvy88]

Recently, my parents encountered a problem with their old ass Gateway...

They have SP2 XP installed and every time they turn the thing on it hangs at the splash screen, the load bar doesn't even move at all.

Tried booting in all types of safe modes, vga mode, last good config, everything! Everything hangs. Safe mode hangs at the agpcpq.sys file and never goes past that.

I tried putting an XP cd into the drive and do a fixboot in the recovery console...

After the setup is loading all the files and is about to load win xp it hangs there too!

I've never had a setup cd hang on me like this and am completely shocked that this system is completely avoiding me! What do I do!

 

[tigsounds]

If it's that bad, put the XP disk back in the drive and do a repair. Instructions are HERE.

 

[pcenvy88]

I tried doing the repair with the Xp disc... I get hung up on that too!

 

[alphi99]

dude,try to instal a fresh instal of xp.this should solve the prob.
If not,then it may b a hardware issue lik processor gets over heatd or somthin lik that

 

[pcenvy88]

I can't do a fresh install... Everytime I have the hard drive connected to the motherboard the computer hangs at the gateway splash screen and I can't even get into bios... Just got into windows recovery tool but that was without a hard drive connected. very frustrated at this point

 

[me 1]

Without any hard drive connected?!
I'm guessing you can only reach as far as Choose Windows instalation, at the recovery console, which you can't because whitout the hard drive you can't do anything. A wild guess, maybe removing the hard drive, and when you are at recovery console, put it back in...(yep, I know, sounds stupid...and you probably already tried that )
Can't you borrow a hard drive from somebody and test that?

Also see here:
http://www.d-a-l.com/help/windows-xp-help/52908-how-edit-startup-drivers-prob.html

 

[pcenvy88]

I don't know how to change HDD controllers or even know what those settings are...

I tested the cd-drive and hard drive in MY system and they both work fine....

Maybe flashing the bios on this motherboard will be my next step... just don't get why I can't get past gateway screen no matter what....

 

[pcenvy88]

Found those settings but that wasn't it....

I ended up taking the PSU out and installing a slightly better one. BINGO! XP started up right away beautifully...never had a PSU fry on me like that before but I guess thats what it was...

SOLVED

thanks for help guys