XP won't boot, but will in Safe Mode.

Mixxer

Reputable
Aug 16, 2015
7
0
4,520
Hi, WinXP won't boot. Winter storm knocked power off while system was on. Once system rebooted it said I had a RAM problem. It kept giving me this error along with a message that it had reduced the amount of RAM and kept booting up to a BSOD having to do with the video card. I finally got past all of that. The memory has apparently been "reduced" (I assume it's skipping 1 or 2 modules of ram), did a system restore, and I was able to boot up into safe mode and reinstall the video driver so I no longer get the BSOD. No more memory errors or BSOD.

Now I have a new problem. XP shows the "loading" screen then goes blank. The monitor cuts off. The hard drive reads/writes for 5+ more minutes, then I can hear the hard drive heads stop (hard drive clicks loud), then it reboots. I am sure the problem is NOT with the hard drive. I can boot up into safe mode and things work fine.

I don't have my original WinXP CD's so reinstalling windows isn't an option.

I can boot up into Safe Mode and copy anything to another PC. Is there any log files I can check out? Any help appreciated.

16 year old Dell Dimension 8100.
 
Solution
Boot into safe mode and in command prompt type "sfc /scannow" without quotations, it can check and possibly repair windows.

That's all solution i got at.
Thanks, I tried the "sfc /scannow". It asked me to insert my CD because files needed to be copied. I don't have the CD.

I found an old backup and extracted it to a folder and went through the most important windows folders and copied files/folders over and finally got it working. Not sure how. I did notice that some of the file/folder names on were wrong, such as "Font" was named as "Font. (". I guess the crash messed with the file system. Anyway, its fixed good enough. It boots in normal mode.
 


Thanks for the update, now i know those without a disc must make a clone of the hard drive.