[Home] OS will not open after Recovery?

[bojovan]

I had to do a Recovery on my Compaq Desk Top, after doing the recovery my computer will not fully boot into Windows XP Home. It goes through the boot sequence up to displaying the Windows Home logo and then it goes no further. I have no idea what is happing, I tried a different hard drive thinking that was the problem, made no difference... Very confusing ... Can someone please give me an idea what could be the problem. I have tried everything I can think of...

[photolady]

What was the reason for the recovery to begin with?

[bojovan]

What was the reason for the recovery to begin with?

Because it was doing the very same thing it is now... I have never come across anything like this before... Was working fine then one day this

[bruce_b]

If the hard drive was not the issue, then it could be either a bad CMOS Battery (CR-2032 button cell on the mobo) or maybe bad RAM .... the power supply may also be on it's way or already partly failed.

Memtest86 can test the memory. It is free to use. donations are optional.

http://memtest86.com/

[photolady]

I'd be more inclined to think bad memory than anything else mentioned. And actually, this is the link you need. memtest86+ is .org, not .com, bruce

Memtest86+ it's free here.

You'll need a floppy drive and floppy disk or a cd. To use a cd, you'll need to burn a .iso image to make it bootable because these tests run before windows and after P.O.S.T.

How can I write (burn) ISO files to CD?

[bruce_b]

Something is not right .. on my link it says Memtest is at V3.4
and you Do Not need to pay for it (but they have a donate link)

On your link it is only up to V2.01 .. so the question now is,
which is the Real Memtest site and what is really the latest
version ? ?

The developer of that great utility should get this sorted out
and if someone has a bogus site offering his work, it should
be dealt with.

Note: I think I see the difference .. one is Memtest86
and the other is Memtest86+ (a supposedly better / improved version)
But both sites allow free download of the program .. just get the ISO
image and burn it to a CD

[bojovan]

Checked everything except power supply, do not have a spare... How likely is it to be the power supply?

[photolady]

Bruce, the link you gave is the author's site. I don't know what the difference is in either link but the one I gave has a link to the original author's site near the bottom. This is the one I've always posted, mostly because it shows all the types of downloads you can get there. Files, like, .iso's, etc.

It really doesn't matter which site one uses, I've just always had that one bookmarked. I'm not sure whatever version is better.

What did memtest show? Did you let it run overnight? Because if you didn't, you should.

[bojovan]

BUMP

[bojovan]

My PC was working just fine then something happened? What component could have caused this to happen. If we can figure this out I should be able to get my PC up and running again... Any ideas... This will haunt me until I get it fixed

[photolady]

Evidently it wasn't working fine if you did a complete restore, which didn't work. Then you tried a new/different harddrive, and it's still not booting to xp. Something is causing this problem and that is why we keep telling you it could be bad ram. Bad ram causes all manner of problems. And this is why I suggested you run the memtest overnight.

Power supply problems don't usually refuse to let you load windows, they usually won't even let you turn the computer on.

Possible other problems could be bad IDE/SATA cable, depending on harddrive type.

The problem with you have has to be narrowed down. We can't just say, it's the harddrive or it's the ram or it's the psu.

If you have another psu around, you could try that too.

[bojovan]

I gave up on the recovery software... I installed a windows xp pro disk that I came across... It worked just fine... I want to thank everyone for all the help... Somehow the recovery disks must have been infected...

[photolady]

Well, it could be the recovery disks were defective, not infected. This happens sometimes, if, the disks are not keep in a case, or have not been kept safe from scratches.

Glad to hear you cured the problem.

[Train]

Or they got a finger print on it. You would be surprised what little it takes to blow a install.