Reboot loop - at a loss

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dazzazzad

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Not sure if this is hardware or software related.

My dad's work pc slowed down on Friday and needed to be manually rebooted. Since then when loading XP it shows the first load screen but after that and before the login screen, the pc reboots with no error message. Same story in safe mode.

I figured some windows files must have been corrupted so I...

- did the boot fix
- did the master boot fix
- ran chkdsk /r

Still no joy. I put Ubuntu live disk in and ran memtest, which found no problems. Browsing the HD it appears to be fine as well.

I've now pretty much reached the ceiling of my diagnostic abilities. Anyone have some ideas or suggestions?
 
backup data and format :D

im sure there is a quicker solution but sometimes it just takes too damn long to run through software/hardware diagnostics. plus with a format you get a smooth operating system from scratch again
 
Well for it to reboot in Safe Mode is indicative of two problems: Usually hardware related (PSU; Overheating; Motherboard) or The OS is fried!!!

In Safe Mode drivers and apps are not loaded so a corrupt driver will not cause the rebooting. It is possible that a virus has damaged the OS at kernel level.

The fact that you can run an Ubuntu Live CD does point things at the M$ OS.

As per PNs recommendation, just clean install.
 
Sounds like a virus/malware I encountered recently. Take the hdd out, plug into another pc and do a full scan.

For full removal you might have to edit the registry file to delete a prefetch command.
 
I would be surprised if its a virus as my dad's pc has pretty good protection and the secretary only uses the internet for banking and email.
 
Test your hdd with something like seatools
 
I tested with the HD check on the ubuntu live cd as well. It found no problems.

Will try that repair idea.
 
If you can access the hdd in any mode or fashion, see if there are any strange files like "c.exe" in the root directory.
 
last night i had a yellow triangle thing appear on my taskbar saying corrupt file or something but i just left it and this morning when i switched on the pc did a chkdsk run or whatever you call it and that yellow warning triangle has not come back.
what is that about?
 
Trying the second repair option now. It's at 4% and telling me it can't copy the pjlmon.dll file and wants to know if i want to skip it.
 
Well I did that second XP repair option. There were 4 files that I had to skip though. When it was done it rebooted and now I have the XP installation setup screen. Did I do something wrong? I hope I haven't lost any data. Should I go through with this process now?
 
It is unlikely that the data is lost unless the hdd is damaged and if so it would have been detected before the installation. Why did you skip the 4 files? Could the dvd/cd drive not read those files? If so, do the repair installation again. Clean the cd first without scratching. If the file can't be read, remove clean and replace again, if still struggling try another installation disk. If you have more than 1 optical drive, try the repair installation from that drive or even an external dvd drive if you can get hold of one.

Edit: After the repair installation you did, did you maybe tell it to boot from cd, if so just reboot and let it boot without touching the keyboard. It must boot from hdd.:)
 
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Okay, so this repair will return XP to its original pre service packs state, but will leave my documents folders intact?

I had to skip because those 4 files could not be copied over, despite retries.

So I should bail on the installation steps window that I'm now faced with and just go through the repair process again, after a bit of TLC for the XP disk?
 
DVD seems in pretty poor shape. I cleaned and then a second run through only had a couple files that wouldn't go across.

But you know what, I'm just going to back up their important data, format and throw on Win 7.

Anyone know if Accpac saves its data to a nice handy my documents folder? And is there any way for me to save her Outlook data? Thunderbird would, of course, be a breeze but apparently it didn't work with Accpac so she used Outlook. But if I remember from using it all those years ago, you had to manually back up emails, contacts etc. Hope I'm wrong though.
 
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