Hard Drive or Windows?pc Wont Boot Up Correctly and is Stuck in a Continual Loop!

[soupdragon1973]

the boot sequence on my pc doesnt seem to work anymore,it keeps going to a screen offering me to go into safe mode,which I then try to do and the whole thing goes right back the beggining again and trys to boot up again from scratch.this becomes a loop it gets stuck in continually.Is this my harddrive or does windows need re-installing?

[kel13]

2 things come to mind , a virus or hardware problem.easy way to check is boot off a floppy or cd of somekind {almost anything eg: win boot disk or a diag program } if computer boots alright then it's most likely a software problem if it acts the same {continuous loop} its hardware.

[Hybrid]

Could be simple file corruption, caused by powering off improperly or similar.

Running a checkdisk from the recovery console via booting off a Window install CD should fix it, assuming the hard drive is not faulty.

[soupdragon1973]

when booting I press F9 key for xpress recovery and get a screen with the message "HD does not support HPA!" any ideas please?

[philthomas]

Have you tried booting with the Windows CD, as suggested ?

[soupdragon1973]

nope as unfortunately its not my pc and we cant locate the windows vista cd,all I have found is a copy of XP which I tried but it was saying there was an error as it couldnt find the hard drive.I am hoping we locate this windows cd tonight so I can give it a whirl

[Hybrid]

If XP cannot find the harddrive it is probably faulty thus resulting in Windows not booting.

Get into your BIOS and see if the drive shows up, if it does not it is dead.

[soupdragon1973]

yes its shwoing up in bios,I checked that.I will give it another whirl.i thought I needed vista though,let me try xp again

[Hybrid]

XP won't see it if it is an SATA drive, it needs drivers to see them first but they are a pain to install, a massive pain.

In the BIOS set the SATA hard drive mode to IDE emulation. Then XP will see it and you can do the first repair option, then select the windows install, then type; chkdsk /r and let it do its thing.

[soupdragon1973]

sorry to be a pain,cant find this IDE emulation mode in my bios setttings,I looked everywhere.Do u need the name of the bios?it is SATA drive yes.

[Hybrid]

Some PCs don't have the option, it's more common on laptops.

You need a Vista install CD to do a boot repair or put the drive into another machine to then use that to run the checkdisk tool.

[splassht]

i have the same problem but i dont have a xp disk cause i got the computer second hand
i have tried a windows 7 disk but it says that there are no bootable devices

[philthomas]

i have the same problem but i dont have a xp disk cause i got the computer second hand
i have tried a windows 7 disk but it says that there are no bootable devices

Start a new thread m8y and explain exactly what your problem is .... the more info you give the better chance you have of a good reply..... this thread is old now and will get overlooked