Computer Can't boot into windows

from Stardock Forums

A couple years ago I got an hp prebuilt PoS PC, which served me well for a while until I built my new rig. Now When I built the new rig, I gave the old HP PC to my girlfriend who's laptop died. In the last few days the HP computer hasn't been able to boot itself into windows. It gets to the windows loading screen with the green progress bar (but the windows logo isn't there) and will sit there forever. Upon a restart it asks if we wanna try a Safe reboot or something (not safe mode, it tries to boot windows and then gives it a diagnostic when it can't) and the diagnostic can't figure out whats wrong. I've done everything I can from the Post screen except for system restore, which is the next course unless we can figure out wtf is going on. Anyone have any ideas?

34,037 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Do a System restore...  If you can.  If not you may have to do a complete reinstall. ;P

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Are you able to try safe mode instead of just safe boot?  Also I can't remember what the XP recovery disk was like, you could try that.  I know once i changed some settings with Win7 which caused my PC to bluescreen on boot, I just popped in the recovery disk and it put the settings back to the way they should be.

Either way there is most likely nothing wrong with the hardware, if there are no files you need to recover from the harddisk you could just reformat right away.  If there are files you could use a linux livecd to mount your windows partition to grab whatever you need off before reformatting.

Without any error messages It's a bit difficult to pin point why it's not booting up, someone might have that answer but reformatting is always nice anyways with XP.  Gives it that new fresh feeling to give to someone else.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top

Check the BIOS. I have an HP and it did the same thing.  Turned out the BIOS setting for the Hard drive was incorrect (I do not have the laptop here, but will try to look it up if you need the setting later tonight).

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

If you could Dr Guy thatd be great. I forgot to mention that it's Vista 64 bit, if that helps. I'm gonna rip the files we need off of it and system restore I guess, Seems to be my only option.

Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top

The setting is "Sata Native Mode" and I had to disable it.  I am running XP, not VISTA, so I am not sure if Microsoft fixed support for SATA in Vista (I suspect not).

Good luck.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Try this HP page it has several options to look at

 

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00899280&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Allright so I messed around in the BIOS today and got it to work. Sort of. The boot device priority was set with the cd drive first. I changed it to the HDD first and the disc drive second and it booted up and worked. then we restarted it and it went back to not booting up. So Unless someone else has an idea it looks like a system restore is in order.

Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top

Quoting Resist_The_Dawn, reply 7
Allright so I messed around in the BIOS today and got it to work. Sort of. The boot device priority was set with the cd drive first. I changed it to the HDD first and the disc drive second and it booted up and worked. then we restarted it and it went back to not booting up. So Unless someone else has an idea it looks like a system restore is in order.

I have had that happen before as well (CD first, a non-bootable, but apparently some thing on it CD messes up the boot).  I would say that if you can boot to safe mode, a system restore is very much in order.  It is quick and relatively painless.  If it will not let you do a system restore, then you have a bigger problem (a trojan) that is a bear to get rid of.