[RESOLVED] Windows XP won't boot--corrupt registry?

Here's where i found most of the info on mup.sys: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/31874 looks like quite a popular problem....unfortunately.


Liam

OK, while I was browsing around on the sites looking for information, the green bar started to move again, after probably several minutes or so. It keeps going, then stopping, then going again. It seems like maybe it's just loading suuuuuuper slow? When the XP logo first came on, it took it about 15 seconds just to fade in to view.

Should I just let it try to load for awhile? Even now, the green bar is moving some, sporadically. This is so strange. :confused: Before I tried that, I also went and "chkdsk /p" both my SATA drives, and they BOTH came up as having one or more errors. But again, Western Digital's diagnostics said they didn't have any problems.

Thanks Liam, I browsed through that thread for awhile. Sounded like it wasn't very hopeful, and since I am getting short for time (I'm a med student, and already horrendously behind in my work b/c of the computer crashing) I decided to just try and restore the factory image of the recovery disk, because that is the only thing that has resolved this problem in the past (this is the second time it's happened, last was 6 months ago).

It seeemed to restore the factory image okay, but I think I did something to it in the process of trying to fiddle with it earlier, because now it won't boot the factory image either--it reboots. Wow! I've never messed it up this much before. :) I guess my last choice really is to just reformat it.

Thanks for all the help Liam and others. :) I learned a lot in the process of doing this, and I really appreciate your efforts.

So, I guess I have two--no, three--questions then. First, the second drive in the computer, can I just leave that alone and format the first drive and put the OS on it, and it will be okay, so that I can just read all the files on it after I've clean installed XP?

Second, would you guys recommend doing the clean install from the recovery disk, or should I try and find a real copy of Windows XP somewhere? Are there any negatives to using the recovery disk to reinstall XP?

Third--what might I have done that would make the factory image also unable to boot? What affects that?

Thanks folks. :p

So, I reformatted, and everything is going okay, except sometimes it lags on installing some of the applications I was putting on there (Net 1.1, AOL, Adobe Version Cue in particular) or has trouble restarting after it has lagged (have to just push the reset button). I guess that's another issue though. :o Thanks everyone.

EDIT: Why am I unable to edit my original post? I'd like to change the title somehow to indicate that a resolution was reached via reformatting. Is there a time-limit to edit posts? I notice I only have the option to edit about half of them.

You can't edit the original post manually, but to mark this resolved, go to Thread Tools at the top of the posts, and click Mark This Thread Resolved.

You're Welcome for the help:), sorry it had to end so badly.


Liam

Got it. Thanks Liam.