system wont start up.. 1

[imnotagenius]

I have a gateway PII 500mhz pc with 128mb ram..i installed xp pro on it like a month ago and it was working fine. I installed another 128mb ram 2 days ago and tried to start the system..It started fine and also detected the additonal ram. But since yesterday its not being starting up again..It will give a message that windows didnt start up successfully coz of new hardware or software installation and give me option to start in safe mode or start windows noramally or start thru the previous successful setting..No matter which option i choose it will try to start up and just restart the system. I even removed the ram that i installed but it still wouldnt start up. so if anybody knows the solution to this problem please help me out..

 

[linney]

You may have inadvertently loosened some connection when installing the new Ram. You might try just swapping the old Ram with the new.

This free program will create a floppy for you to boot from and check out your RAM. It would be interesting to know if your machine was able to boot from this floppy.

http://www.memtest86.com

Maybe you should also check the Motherboard manufacturer for a Bios update (if available) for your machine.

Did you have any warnings etc. when you first installed XP from the Compatibility checking program?

 

[Waldus]

This same problem is happening to me and it began after I installed a network printer.

 

[imnotagenius]

The only warning i got was that some networking driver or sofrware didnt install. But, the system worked just fine. so i m just gonna try to use the tips you gave me and see what happens..

 

[Waldus]

I resolved this problem. Before the computer restarted in Saft mode it was displaying a blue screen for about one tenth of a second. I couldn't halt the computer with the pause key to read the message displayed in the blue screen so I had to restart it many times to read word by word the error message. Finnally I read the error message and it was UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. I found information in the Microsoft Knowledgebase about this issue. You have to use a bootable XP CD to run the recovery console and then run chkdsk /r.

Hope this helps.