Please Help! Computer Won't Boot!

Hello All,

My desktop won't boot up.

I had Vista installed, but it kept having driver issues, so I decided to go back to XP Pro 64-bit. I put the XP disk in, deleted Vista, installed XP. It was doing fine until it got to the Restart part of the installation. It said it would continue with setup after installation. Well, during the restart, it wouldn't get past the mobo splash screen.

When you first start the machine, the mobo splash screen should appear, followed by IDE drive recognition, etc.

Well, it gets to the mobo splash screen, then freezes. I'm not sure what to do now. I don't have another mobo that supports SATA HDs, so I can't check the drive, but it should be ok.

Could the mobo have crashed during reinstallation? I can't even boot from a CD, the CD drive was the first on the list on the boot menu in the BIOS.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

restore defaults in the BIOS.

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Originally Posted by robwhit

restore defaults in the BIOS.

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I can't access the BIOS. It doesn't get there. It doesn't get to the hardware recognition step either. It stays at the mobo splash screen, hitting DEL doesn't do anything. It stays frozen.

try to use the corresponding switch on the motherboard

Disconnect all your non-essential hardware from the board. This includes ALL drives, sound cards, network cards, etc... Pretty much everything except the video, otherwise you can't see if you fixed it or not.

More than likely, a device is not responding properly and the board can't initialize. If you disconnected everything and the board starts to boot, then start replacing devices one at a time until your find the problems. If you find a problem device, don't stop there, because it's possible that more than one device has failed.

If the board still won't boot after disconnecting everything, you probably have one of the following:
1.) Bad RAM. Find some known good memory and do some swap tests.
2.) Bad video, if you have an external video card. Once again, find a known good one and do some swapping.
3.) Bad processor. This is extremely unlikely, but I've seen it happen.
4.) Strange power supply issues. Once again, very unlikely, but I've seen it.
5.) Motherboard damage. Not much you can do here except replace the board.

I did computer repair for eight (long, painful) years, and this is where I would start. See if any of those things help.

Sounds to me like it's a problem with your disks, try out AverageSoftware's proposal, and if it works after disconnecting everything, start re-assembling it one at a time, and at some point you will find the bad piece of hardware, i'm willing to bet cash that it's a problem with your HD's...

Thanks guys! I'll give it a try and keep you updated.

It looks like its the hard drive. I may have more questions, because what I'm thinking about doing is getting a second hard drive just for the operating system, and then fix this and use it for documents/pictures/music. I think it is ok, I just think it may have some corrupt files that prevents me from booting.

I'll keep everyone updated and if I have more questions.

Thanks!

You might try SimplyMEPIS or Knoppix or some other bootable operating system (the two I suggested are Linuxes). From there, you could try mounting your hard drive or scanning it for errors.

Knoppix is the greatest troubleshooting tool known to man.

6) CPU
I've had similar symptoms with a bogus CPU

Well, I got it working. I now have two hard drives, and I'm currently formatting the old one. I really appreciate everyone's suggestions, and everyone has been really helpful! Thanks again!

Oops, didn't see 3) was the same as 6) sorry AverageSoftware!

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Originally Posted by zacs7

6) CPU
I've had similar symptoms with a bogus CPU

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"Bogus?" Like, made out of plastic instead of silicon? ;)

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"Bogus?" Like, made out of plastic instead of silicon?

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Actually I cooked it, over a month of 24/7 DVD to HDD backups. At first I thought it was the DVD drive that was playing up, then memory, then the BSODs said it was the sound card, then it wouldn't boot so I thought it was the HDD. Very annoying and weird.