XP Pro Reboot Loop

[beerhunter2]

CPU - AMD XP 2600+
MB - Gigabyte GA-7VT600-L
RAM - 256MB DDR333
HDD - Seagate 40GB IDE
OS - Win XP Pro OEM

Was running fine a few months ago, but now goes into a constant reboot cycle. Gets to the initial Windows XP loading screen, and then reboots.

Nothing different when using Last Known Good Configuration.
When loading in Safe Mode, gets to MUP.SYS, hangs there for a while and then reboots. Same with Boot to DOS Prompt.

Tried running a repair from the Windows XP CD, but when selecting the repair option, it can not find any hard drives (although BIOS sees it fine). The same message appears if I select the Setup Windows option.

Downloaded the hard disk diagnostic utility from Seagate, and it found 2 bad sectors at around 20% and 40% on the disk. The first one it could and did repair, the second one not.

Swapped out the RAM. Swapped HD IDE ribbon cable. Changed power lead to HD. Changed IDE slot on motherboard. No difference.

Tried connecting another HD with Windows 2000 Pro, and the system BIOS wouldn't recognize it.
Tried connecting a differnt HD with Windows 200 Pro, and it went into a reboot cycle just like the original XP HD.

Pretty much at my wits end here. Does anyone here have any suggestions, or any ideas as to what might be causing this?

Help! I've fallen and I can't reach my beer.

 

[electronicsfreak]

I dont think this is hardware problem, sounds like software, possible virus maybe not, heres some links.

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/31874/

http://www.earthv.com/tips_detail.asp?TipID=63

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=MUP.SYS&btnG=Google+Search

 

[beerhunter2]

Thanks for the response electronicsfreak, but alas no joy.

All i have plugged into any slot is an AGP video card.

Tried the BIOS upgrade. Tried changing a bunch (almost all one by one) BIOS settings. Tried moving RAM. Still no luck.

Most of the other solutions suggested assume that you can get to the repair disk function from the WinXP CD, which of course I can't because it doesn't recognize that there is a hard drive.

Any other ideas out there?

Help! I've fallen and I can't reach my beer.

 

[electronicsfreak]

Well I do have another idea although I dont know if you will like it lol. Make a windows 98 boot disc load from there and format. But id await a comment from someone else before attempting that as someone else might have a better idea.

 

[linney]

Will something like BartPe run on this machine?

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

You may have an expensive Motherboard problem (hope not).

I d e n t i f y i n g - P h y s i c a l D e f e c t s

http://www.badcaps.net/ident/

Can you load the recovery console and run ChkDsk /r from that or from BartPe?

Download NTFSDOS Pro (Read-Only) (1.8MB) by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdospro.shtml

NTFSDOS Professional (free, read only version) also comes with NTFSCHK, a tool for running the Windows NT/2000/XP CHKDSK program from within MS-DOS. NTFSCHK allows you to verify and repair the NTFS disk structure in case of accidental corruption.

This can be run after booting from any 9x or XP MS-Dos startup floppy.

NtfsChk will only check and repair NTFS partitions.

Black Startup Screen Is Briefly Displayed, Computer Restarts Repeatedly (Q314466)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q314/4/66.asp

 

[beerhunter2]

Thanks for the input guys.

electronicsfreak - client didn't really care about the data on the hard drive, as it was a networked computer. Tried Fdisk from a Win98 boot disk, and it came back with "Disk Error".

linney - Thanks for the ideas and links. I had downloaded NTFS4DOS a bit earlier. I assume it's very similar to NTFSDOS. I ran it for about 4 hours last night, and it came back with "File record segment ### is unreadable", starting from segment 178 to segment 10,000. That's when I aborted the process.

Don't know how many "File record segments" there are on a 40GB hard disk, but I assume based on the previous information that this hard drive is toast. Please correct me if I am wrong, and that I should be running the chkdsk until it completes.

I now need to find another hard drive to test in this computer to see if anything else is wrong with it. Client doesn't want to pour money into this computer if there is more wrong with it than just the hard drive.

Once I find another hard drive and test, I'll let you know what I find.

Help! I've fallen and I can't reach my beer.

 

[linney]

The stumbling block to blaming just the hard drive is the fact you state you have tried another hard drive and had similar problems.

A way to check other bits and pieces would be to see if BartPE runs from the CD drive.

 

[beerhunter2]

Sorry it took so long to get back to you linney.

I tried creating a BartPE CD, but no luck there. Tried creating it on my laptop with the clients XP CD, but it complained that the version on the CD was too old so aborted the process. The only other XP CD I had was an OEM (Dell) XP CD with SP2, and it complained about the fact that it was OEM. It went through the entire process for creating an ISO image, but none was created in the end.

So, in the end, I did try one more hard drive and still didn't have any success. My best guess is that the motherboard and/or CPU was also fried. I reported that to my client, and they are just going to go ahead and buy a new computer.

Help! I've fallen and I can't reach my beer.

 

[ceh4702]

In the BIOS there is a boot on error option that might be able to be turned off. I think this causes windows to show you the error message instead. XP is really tricky about hardware errors. I would try rebooting in safe mode, there are several different types. One is video in case the video drivers are corrupt or you have a video problem. I think it resets your video back to safe settings.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.