Windows XP XP has stopped booting

[RichardAH]

Hi

I recently did a clean install of XP home on a Dell XPS M1210. This was SP2, but I installed SP3 and all the latest Windows updates, as well as a host of drivers off the Dell website.

So far so good.

I want to use this for playing back wmp audio files to a D to A converter. So I downloaded Windows media player 10 (this suits me better than later versions) and the Cambridge Audio sound to USB driver. I disabled the standard audio driver in Control Panel. I wanted remote access over the network. Windows remote desktop add on did not want to install, so I used Teamviewer 9. Apart from this, there is almost nothing on the machine, so it's pretty lean and mean.

This worked fine.

I was playing back some music (accessing the system via Teamviewer), and was using Google to access a Youtube video, when the system became unresponsive. It continued to the end of the playlist, but I then shut it down by holding the power button.

From this point onwards, it has refused to boot normally The Windows screen comes up, but then goes black, and the login screen never appears.

Sorry if there is too much detail, but it might help to have the full picture.

I have tried:

Last known good
Restore point

It will boot into safe mode. From there I have

run a chkdsk (no errors reported)
Used MSCONFIG to disable all startup programs and all non-windows services
Uninstalled Teamviewer

But no success with any of these

Thanks for your help

Richard

 

[RichardAH]

I have just tried using the Recovery Console to Fixboot and Fixmbr, and it seems to make no difference, although it reported that my mbr was non-standard.

One thing that I have realised is that it seems to have deleted my administrator password. When I go in via safe mode, it just lets me in without asking. When it asked me for the Recovery Console, it rejected my
usual password, but accepted a plain Enter.

Any contributions gratefully received

Richard

 

[patcooke]

MBR corruption and admin account changes are serious issues but do not suggest to me any obvious possible causes or solutions. I would be tempted to take the pc completely back to scratch with a full formatting of the hard drive. After fully installing I'd use something like Acronis True Image (you can download a fully working month-long free trial) to completely image the system drive as insurance against having to repeat the process. Then try the system again and see if there any repeat problems. If there are then the Acronis image will at least enable a full recovery in minutes instead of hours of re-installing op sys, updates and apps before proceeding to more in depth investigations.

 

[RichardAH]

MBR corruption and admin account changes are serious issues but do not suggest to me any obvious possible causes or solutions. I would be tempted to take the pc completely back to scratch with a full formatting of the hard drive. After fully installing I'd use something like Acronis True Image (you can download a fully working month-long free trial) to completely image the system drive as insurance against having to repeat the process. Then try the system again and see if there any repeat problems. If there are then the Acronis image will at least enable a full recovery in minutes instead of hours of re-installing op sys, updates and apps before proceeding to more in depth investigations.

Thanks for good advice.

In desperation, I worked my way back through the restore points, and found one that worked.

Now to go through the final stages with lots of restore points!

Richard