Only goes to Boot Options Screen over and over!

[dexterdoo]

I have a Dell D620 laptop that won’t boot into XP. It’s starts to, but keeps looping between the Boot Options screen. I tried ALL of the options and the drive tested ok and passed all virus and malware scans. Neither Recovery Console's fixboot nor fixmbr would correct the problem. Is there no other way to fix this type of boot problem besides a clean install of the O/S??
Thanks-

 

[BadBigBen]

the BOOT LOOP can be caused by a number of things...

it could be a mainboard problem (some P35 mainboards have had this), a driver issue, a windows file corruption, and many other things...

can you enter safe-mode?
have you tried the F8 menu, LAST KNOWN CONFIGURATION?

probably the PC is encountering a BSOD and is rebooting:

if you can enter safe-mode then right click my computer >> properties >> advanced >> startup and recovery settings and then uncheck "automatically restart"...

then reboot the PC as you normally would...

if the PC does stop with a BSOD, then note down the error code and post it here for us to see...




Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[NSVTECH]

If you have the Dell Reinstallation CD, you can boot from it and at the first Menu, select "To Setup Windows XP Now", do NOT select Recovery Console "Repair".

Press the F8 key to accept the licensing agreement and at the next screen look for a "Repair" option. Press "R" to do a safe Reinstallation. You programs, data and configuration won't be effected.

Not all Dell's will have this option, if that's the case your options are limited. If the hard drive is bad, you can remove the hard drive and connect it with a Sata/IDE to USB adapter to another computer with a copy image software such as Norton's Ghost or Acronic True Image. With a replacement hard drive just recover the image and install in your failing computer.

 

[goombawaho]

What I generally do before a reload is this:

1. Check hard drive with manufacturer's short test
2. Check memory with Windows memory diag (quicker than others)

3. Try to get the blue screen code by doing an F8 during startup and choosing "Disable Automatic Restart on system failure"

4. Boot to a BartPE CD and do a CHKDSK C: /F This fixed a problem yesterday on a Dell that just had the windows file system scrambled to the point where it was throwing an "unmountable boot volume" blue screen.

Run it three times just to be sure. This has allowed normal booting for me on quite a few systems. Of course, failure in items 1 and 2 trump anything after that.