XP won't boot

bingo_bango

No idea what's happened. PC has been booting normally, now won't complete POST. Almost gets there, then just restarts itself.
I'm running a LINUX live disk to get on here (lappie has been poorly for a while....must fix it:P), but nothing seems to be working. Have run testdisk from the LINUX, and it says it can't find a partition,, but it said that the last time I tried it, so can't count on that.
Any ideas?

p.s. have tried safe mode, same problem.

kingmonkey

If it doesnt get past POST then its probably something to do with the bios.

Have you changed any settings recently?

bingo_bango

No, nothing changed. I have gone back in to tweak BIOS (made no difference), but nothing of any significance.
It seems like the MBR is corrupted. I see a flash of BSOD just before it restarts, but no idea what's on it, doesn't stay up long enough.
Is there any way of getting a standard MBR backup, or are they, as I suspect, individual to each machine?

j_davies

Start up the PC with the XP disk in and boot from the CD and choose the option to repair using the recovery console and then type Fixmbr it Repairs the master boot record of the partition boot sector

bingo_bango

I only have a recovery disk though.

j_davies

bingo_bango wrote:

I only have a recovery disk though.

Oh bum.

I suppose you could try this http://www.ambience.sk/fdisk-master-boot-record-windows-linux-lilo-fixmbr.php