[ZakkUK]

Last night, I had been working late, I'd saved my work and pressed Shut Down on my PC. As it began to shut down my power cut out, possibly a general power cut.

This morning, I began to start my work again but found that when I turn my PC on I get past all the loading and get sent to the "Windows had a problem menu" when selecting any of the options (i.e safe mode or last known good configuration or start windows normally) I get to the windows xp logo page (appearing on screen like a start and stop animation) and the 3 sectioned bar passes through once, then a quick blue screen appears for less than a second so I cannot read the problem then my PC reboots.

Now i've been told to go to the Recovery Console, which my pc currently is, now here is where my problem becomes worse.

I've placed the windows CD inside and am at the recover console but the steps say i would be prompted for a administrative password, i wasn't and when following steps from this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310396 i get the message "The path or file specified is not valid" when typing "cd system32"

[otbjr1]

I am experiencing the exact same issue and it happened at the exact same time. All was fine last night but then this morning it just keeps rebooting continuously after flashing the blue screen of death for a second. The blue error screen flashes too quickly for me to read.

At this point I have been working on the problem for about 16 hours now. I called microsoft but they no longer support my windows xp home edition (unless I pay $59 with no guarantee that they can fix it. I also called MS pc safety/virus helpline, after being on the phone over an hour with them they told me that they could not reselve this.

I tried all 5 menu options that come up before it restarts, safe mode, safe with network support, safe mode command prompt, use last known good configuration, and start windows normally, nothing worked it still reboots. I booted from the windows xp cd and was able to get into safe mode, i did a system restore to a date from a week ago but it did not help. I used the installation CD to boot from again and was able to get to a repair XP point. It went into command prompt and i chose 1: C\WINDOWS to repair. it asked for an admin password but I left it blank. I ran fixboot and chkdsk and exited. I then waited for it to gather info to repair my system and let it run. At some point it asked for my 25 digit product key, whick I typed in.

This whole process took about 3 hours and it reverted my op sys from service pack 3 back to service pack 1. I downloaded and installed service pack 3 and all the updates etc and thought I had it fixed but then it rebooted after a few minutes and I still had the same problem. I did all of the above again and it still rebooted. I took a break after 8 hours and "repaired" windows one more time, it still rebooted.

The only other thing I could think of which I hated to to was to format the entire disk and install a clean copy of xp. This too took a couple of hours. I formatted and everything was fine for about an hour and then it started rebooting again. It's now after midnight and I've been dealing with this since 8 am.

I'm on my laptop now (the issue is with my desktop). Upon further research I found this post on the tech support guy forum. I've also read that there could be a dust build up or even a bad power cord. I doubt either of these is the problem but I will buy a can of compressed air and a new power cord in the am. I'm totally beat and literally have a major headache.

[hemang_jesrani]

Hi. I have had this problem in the past and as I remember this is what I did.

1) Booted into Recovery Console using UBCD4Win, I guess original XP CD is also ok.
2) Used "chkdsk /r" option on C: drive. I think there was a bad sector where there was a system file so this repaired the sector.
3) Next I restored the registry from UBCD4Win (like System Restore).

If you don't have UBCD4Win, I think you have to do this manually. You have to search google for this. I found a link on how to get the files from "System Volume Information", see http://searchwindowsserver.techtarge...167895,00.html.
If you could boot into safe mode in some way, you would be able to do system restore. Wait for some more responses, I don;t want your computers to be completely dead because of something I suggest.

[Tanis]

Something worth a try for both posters is to check your RAM is OK. I had a similar problem with friends PC a few months back (kept blue screening and rebooting during Windows load or at logon screen).

I did various checks and repairs and then ended up with a complete reinstall and nothing seemed to do the trick. I eventually found a bit of info that implied a faulty RAM stick (PC had 2 in it).

Tried booting with 1 in and problem still happened, took that one out and put the other in and everything was fine!

Its a simple and easy check and might (can't promise though) save you more hours of 'head scratching' trying to find the problem.