[sailormoon21]

My desktop pc has recently started to not load up / boot when I turn it on.

When it manages to turn itself on it all works ok. However oftentimes I have to turn it on and turn it off repeatedly until it finally starts to function.

After going through the same problem today, the pc finally turned on properly and I got into Windows. A few moments after that, the electricity was cut.

Now the pc manages to load up until the Windows XP logo and then crashes. At the loading screen the pc makes three grinding sounds (don't know how to call this... my pc is purring at me O.o ). A blue screen appears for a split second and the pc reboots. No matter what option I select, be it to load in safe mode, last good configuration, and so on, the pc always resets at the XP loading process.

I believe it has something to do with hardware because of the issue with the pc intermittently not even booting up.

I am not too savvy when it comes to pc's, can someone suggest what may be wrong?

[queendudette]

That has happened to me do you have a backup disk for windows? If you do pop it into the CD/DVD drive and it should run and restore the system i didn't have one but a friend lent me a windows xp disk and i ran that and it now works

[sailormoon21]

I could attempt a repair but I doubt it is software related. Even because i have reinstalled windows very recently. I'll try however, just to see if it crashes again.

[sailormoon21]

On my hard disk I have two partitions, one C: where windows is installed and another one F: which is smaller and mostly empty

When I type DIR in the windows recovery console under drive C:, I get a delay and an error. When I do the same under drive F: I get the list of files without delay.

Could the hard disk be causing the no-boot when I turn the pc on? When I say the pc doesn't boot i mean it just remains dead, lights turn on, but it's dead.

It's strange even for the hard disk cos last time I performed a system check i got no bad sectors.

[tigerfootballl]

if its makin grindin noises at you, you might run some hard drive tests to see if that's the problem. if you don't have any programs to do that you might check into havin it looked at.

[tigerfootballl]

what program are you using to check the hdd

[sailormoon21]

When everything still worked ok, windows' system check. I had no repair option in the windows setup because my windows installation is in C:\WINXP ; I'm trying to access the files by installing Linux temporarily and then I'll make a format if renaming the WINXP folder to WINDOWS doesn't make the "Repair windows" option appear in the windows setup.

[tigerfootballl]

do you have any type of boot cd? os anything like that?

[sailormoon21]

I've solved the problem about the OS. I have downloaded UBUNTU LIVE CD and managed to get to the drives through that. However my files had accidentally been deleted when I agreed to format the partition, believing it would only format the partition instead of the entire drive! So well, I lost files I'd have rather not part with but it doesn't matter.

I have formatted the HDD and reinstalled windows (for the umpteenth time, seems like the reinstallation&reinstallation grind comes always in batches from time to time!). Things seem to work normally. Probably until I will leave the pc off for a day, then it will fail to start up once again.

Half the problem is solved, I'd still like to know what are your views about the start up problem however.

[tigerfootballl]

idk.. i use hirens boot cd to run all the tests on my computers... and it usually leads me in the right direction. if you couldn't get into the os i would''ve taken out the hard drive connected to my comp backed up the data zero-write the hdd then re-installed on it.