Can't boot Windows - Driver issue?

Yes, yet another can't-boot thread, but I seem to be making some headway on this so perhaps someone can tell me where to go from here, or if I'm right or not.

I try and hook up my digital camera to my PC today. For some reason it did the whole add hardware thing, which I thought was odd because I've used it on my PC before, but my guess is because I used the front USB ports rather than the back, like I did previously. Anyway, after Windows found the thing and was loading the appropriate drivers, my system reboots. Huh. I let it restart, and just as it's getting to the Windows loading screen, it restarts again. I take out the camera, same thing happens.

Things got interesting when I tried to boot up in Safe Mode. Suddenly, it spits out a huge list of drivers, then reboots itself like it does normally. Leads me to believe this is some kind of driver issue, but it's not like I can do much about it since I can't load Windows in any way, shape, or form.

I have tried starting from previous settings, I've cleared the CMOS, I've tried booting from my motherboard CD, I've tried everything but Windows still will not load. My guess is when Windows was trying to load the drivers for the USB port, for some reason it managed to screw everything up. The only drivers I've changed recently are my graphics ones, and that was a rollback I did about a week ago. I'm using all nvidia drivers.

So my question is, what do I do from here? Do I try and boot from my Windows CD (once I go back home and grab it) and try to reinstall Windows from there? Is any of my data in danger here? Any advice is appreciated, or links to others that have had very similar problems so I can see what they did. Thanks.

change your avatar, it sucks and I refuse to read you post having to look at that.

VincentP said:

change your avatar, it sucks and I refuse to read you post having to look at that.

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You are in a bind for sure.

Get the install disk and try to do a repair install. You will get an option at the start for the recovery console but that would probably not help too much. If you are successful with a repair install, your data will be fine. Your programs may have to be reinstalled but your data will stay in place.

Good luck.

I like your avatar.. It's cool.
Did you check the cabling and power inputs to the hdd?
What hdd? Did you run diagnostics on it?
Sounds like either the XP got corrupted or hdd failure.
Save data on another, totally separate drive to cya...

Thanks for the input, for those of you that actually gave useful input anyway.

I tried to repair XP through the repair console accessible from the Windows CD, no changes. I figured it was going to come down to having to reinstall Windows, just wanted to see if maybe it was some famous hardware issue. I have a new 320GB Seagate on the way, so I'll see how well that works with a clean Windows install and a data port.

Do you get into windows and than automatically reboot again? Windows can be set to automatically restart on system failure, might be the situation you describe. If you go to my computer, properties, advanced, then the setting button under startup and recovery. There is a check box that says automatically restart.

Can you get into safe mode? Maybe that will stop the restart from the bad driver and you can than fix things from there?

I can POST, but I can't startup Windows. When starting up it gets to the point where the Windows loading screen would show up, but instead it restarts. I cannot get Windows to start in any way, shape, or form, not even through Safe Mode.

SeraphZero said:

Thanks for the input, for those of you that actually gave useful input anyway.

I tried to repair XP through the repair console accessible from the Windows CD, no changes. I figured it was going to come down to having to reinstall Windows, just wanted to see if maybe it was some famous hardware issue. I have a new 320GB Seagate on the way, so I'll see how well that works with a clean Windows install and a data port.

Click to expand...

I've never really had luck with the repair Console. that's the DOS type window that allows you to replace OS components. I have, however, had good luck with a repair install. If you go forward to the install, you will get an option to do a repair install. I think that is the same screen that lets you delete a current partition too.