Hi all.

I have been given a desktop PC to look at to try to fix but now starting to bang my head against the wall with it!
The PC starts up and goes into the options of safe mode/normal start up and it says about a problem when last shutting down, no mater which I choose it just reboots again.

Safe mode brings all the drivers on screen then hangs then does a reboot.

Normal start up goes to the windows logo screen with progress bar. Then it hangs and then puts up a blue screen with the problem on screen but disappears too quickly to read. It then does a reboot!

I have put a windows Home and Pro CD in to boot from ok. I have gone through the loading of it to try and do a repair of windows but when it looks for windows it does not find any so does not give me any option of repair only install a fresh copy.

The PC will boot into ‘Recovery Console’ using a windows CD and I can get to the ‘C:\Windows>’ prompt.

When given the PC the only CD that came with it was a motherboard CD and no other CD’s! I have asked what windows XP version was on it (home or pro) but they had no idea and there is no windows serial sticker on it to tell me neither. They say they cant find any other CD’s!

I have put the hard drive in my USB caddy and my PC can see it ok, managed to save all their documents onto my PC so far.

Questions:
How can I tell what version of windows XP is on it?
Would it be possible to do this using my USB hard drive caddy?
Is there another way of re-installing the drivers to get it to boot up using the recovery console?
Can I find out what the serial number is for the version of windows on the hard drive before any repair are done say through my USB caddy if possible? (Know I can do this with a program called ‘Berlarc Advisor’ once I do get it up and running again but wonder if possible before).

Any help with the above would be much appreciated.

Regards
DaveL

You could well have a hardware problem here.

The first thing I would check is the hard drive.

There should diagnostic software on the hard drive manufacturers web site.
You should be able to burn to a cd and boot from the cd to run a check on the health of the hard drive.

Also if you're getting to the repair console prompt, you could try running the chkdsk utility.
Type chkdsk /r at the prompt (noting the space before the /). Press enter.

Another thought, is this pc a custom build or is it a Hp, Packard Bell etc.

If it's one of the well known brands, they usually have an hidden partition on the hard drive for repair and re-install functions.

Which is usually accessed by one of the F key combinations on boot up.

Hi Mart

Thanks for the help.
Decided I would have a go with the Dos command first before checking to see if hard drive ok. Worked a treat and now starts up ok.

I have used that command once before on a fix and worked then so should have remembered it. Only trouble is that DOS was before my time before getting into PC’s, arrived a bit late with them! Used it a bit when on some PC course to get through the course while learning but that’s it.

While doing some research about the Windows boot up problems I have found this site so thought I would add the link. Not tried it as your suggestion helped but the site mentions about using DOS to recover a problem in booting up.

Please will you have a look and let me know what you think. Link below:

Windows repair with DOS

Once again many thanks for the help

Regards
DaveL

The link you've highlighted is how to run system restore from the repair console.

There's a microsoft support article HERE which describes the procedure as well.

This is fine if you know you have some kind of registry corruption, but if the file structure of the hard drive is damaged, you will need the chkdsk utility to fix it.

So system restore probably wouldn't have worked in your case.

If I were you I would still run a diagnostic test on the hard drive, just to make sure it isn't on the way out.
The problem you've had there can sometimes indicate this.