XP Home will not boot after Norton AV Install 1

[MamaLoca]

My friend's Dell Dimention 2400 will not finish the boot process. It is hanging up on the light blue XP page.

She was renewing her Norton subscription. During the process it told her to go into the registry and make changes. I'm not entirely sure what she did but now her machine won't boot.

I tried booting in safe mode to no avail, I ran a diagnostic app on the CD included with the system. I ran the tests under "System will not boot". Three tests would not complete. The read , confidence and verified tests associated with the IDE Disk.

There is no disk to reinstall XP and besides I'd hate to loose her data. Any suggestions. I told her already this may be over my head. So perhaps I should just have her take it to the local Computer shop. I'd like to help out if I only had a clue where to start.

Nila __________________________________________________________________
Life would be so much easier if I only had the source code.

 

[G0AOZ]

You said, "...I ran the tests under "System will not boot". Three tests would not complete. The read , confidence and verified tests associated with the IDE Disk." This suggests something like a hard disk fault, bad block(s) etc.

I'd suggest the hard disk is taken out of this machine and attached as a slave to a working XP machine. When it starts to boot, stop it from running any CHKDSK tests by hitting any key - you'll see a message to this effect. See if you can read the disk from Windows Explorer. Copy across important data if you're able to. Otherwise, you might need to try something like GetBackData or a similar data recovery prog...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[MamaLoca]

Yeah, I was afraid you'd suggest that.

I wonder if I booted to a Knopix CD if I could read the hard drive from there and, say, copy the data to an external hard drive. I don't have a rig redily availiable to changeout the HD to 'cause right now my main rig is my laptop.

I hate to have to keep running back and forth to her house.

Thanks for the reply, Now I have to figure out how to reinstall XP because I don't have a disk and the ones she has don't seem to be the one I need.



Nila __________________________________________________________________
Life would be so much easier if I only had the source code.