Reboot Loop

[twstdbratt]

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this whole forum thing, but I have a problem with computer that I need help with. I have an HP d530 that is stuck in a reboot loop and I can't figure out why. It won't even boot up in safe mode or to the last known good configuration. The Windows XP screen doesn't even get a chance to pop up before it reboots again. I have checked the boot.ini and the hal.dll and as far as I can tell, everything is good. This computer is from a client of my companies, so we don't know what was done to it to make it to this. We don't want to have to restore it because of losing all the info. We want to be able to see if there is anything that this person downloaded that caused the problem. I get no error message or no blue screen..it just reboots. I have searched the Internet for the passed 4 days, but have been unsuccessful in finding a solution. I am also in training (still going to school, but haven't gotten to any computer courses yet) so a lot of this stuff doesn't make sense to me yet. The only thing we haven't done yet is to slave it to another computer. My boss wants to exhaust all other options first. If anyone has any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it. Remember that I am still learning so please be gentle in your explanations.

Thanks.

 

[Kage]

Hi, Welcome to the forum.

I'm not sure that could be wrong without explanation really as to the full problem.

I'm sure the best thing you could do is Slave it to another computer. It's simple, and you could get all the data off before wiping the drive and re-installing Windows. It's then as simple as putting all the data back.

Other than that, I'm afraid I don't have any answers. Have you tried booting it with Last Known Good Configurations? Instead of safe mode whent the computer boots? Though if you don't have Windows XP on the machine, this option would not be available. It doesn't wipe anything, and just runs the backup boot.ini that it stores.

As for you being a new computer user to this type of stuff. You do seem to know more than a total beginner

Hope this helps

 

[twstdbratt]

Thanks for the reply. The system is running on XP Pro. I've tried going to the last known good configuration, but it does the same thing. Just keeps restarting itself before getting to the Windows XP screen. The only thing that I can get it to boot to is in the recovery console, but I am totally lost when it comes to that stuff. I'm learning though. The computer does the POST, then it goes through the BIOS, but its not picking up on the OS, but the boot.ini only has one OS and is not corrupted and the hal.dll isn't missing or corrupted either. I have checked all of the connections and they are fine. I think it's the hard drive, but we want to make absolutely sure that we can't recover it before having to either restore it or replace it. My boss thought this would be a good learning experience for me, but I am really feeling overwhelmed with this one.

P.S. Thanks for making me feel like I kind-of know what I'm talking about. I have done a lot of reading in the past 4 days. Given myself a crash course on this stuff. I'm beginning to question why I chose this field. LOL.

 

[Kage]

It's okay

The only thing I can think of you to do is run a Slave. Thats definetly the only way I can think of, and is probably the easiest too.

As for the recovery program... I have no idea how to use that either, so don't worry hehe