[welshhuw]

Hi,

My uncle has an oldish PC - it runs XP.
For a few days now it won't start. It gets to the point of saying that Windows Did Not Shut Down... Do you want to start in Safe Mode / Last Good Config / Normally... etc

No matter which option I choose, the PC just turns off.

I've tried booting from CD-Rom with an XP Disc; It says Hit Any Key To Boot From Disc.... But nothing happens at all after hitting any key??

What could be the issue here? And is it fixable?

My total guess is that the hard-drive is dead?

Thanks in advance

[BlueDreamer]

It sounds like either the drive is knackered or the boot sector might be corrupt. Last resort would be to try and format the disk and reinstall, or try a straight reinstall, you'd probably lose your data unless you had it backed up.

[zed]

if you login to the BIOS does that see the hard disk? just to make sure it's getting power

[Sogo7]

You may get lucky, there is a known virus that puts a PC into an endless reboot cycle. Use a linux boot disc such as Puppy or Ubuntu to fire the PC and see if the hard drive is visable. Both are free downloads, just burn to CD and away you go. Rummage around a bit you may even find the free virus scanner.

[this months LinuxUser magazine has a DVD rom with four bootable operating systems to choose from - £5.99]

[welshhuw]

BlueDreamer, on 10 September 2011 - 03:07 PM, said:

It sounds like either the drive is knackered or the boot sector might be corrupt. Last resort would be to try and format the disk and reinstall, or try a straight reinstall, you'd probably lose your data unless you had it backed up.

I tried using an XP disk > F8 > Boot From Disk > Hit any key to boot from disk > Nothing happens???

Bios is saying it's there too.

I'm not too techie when it comes to stuff like this, I have re-installed XP plenty of times in the past though. With no issues and my uncle doesn't mind losing all the data on their if that's the only option.