Windows XP Boot problem

tranmererovers

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction of what to do next please..

Laptop running XP, gets to the windows load screen and then displays an error which reads 'windows login system terminated unexpectedly' It then reboots and goes round in a loop of displaying the error and rebooting!

I have tried to repair using the XP boot CD and I have run chkdsk /r this fixed one or more errors.

Any advice on likely problem and my next course of action please.

Thanks

tranmererovers

Just to add

I was going to run fixmbr but when I go to do that I get a warning message saying

This computer appears to have a non standard or invalid master boot record. fixmbr may damage your partition tab les if you proceed.

So should I or shouldn't I???

Please help!

fwor

It's possible that the MBR may be corrupt or infected with a MBR-resident virus, but that's probably not the root cause of the current problem. If the MBR were seriously broken it wouldn't get as far as starting to load Windows.

A probable/possible cause is that one or more Windows system files is corrupt.

When you tried to repair, did you do a "repair install"?

Before you go further, it would be worthwhile taking measures to back up your importantl data onto some other media, if you haven't already. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest is probably to download a linux LiveCD, boot from that and copy data to CDs/DVDs or a USB device.

tranmererovers

Thanks fwor - All data that is needed is secure.

So far I have just loaded the recovery console and tried a chkdsk /r

I haven't attempted the Set up windows xp option as yet as I wanted to avoid reloading applications / data

tranmererovers

OK - was being a bit dim - I have investigated the setup option and am now running the repair bit so fingers crossed that will work!