I brought the PC home this afternoon. Tried booting it and it booted to the Safe Mode menu options but went into a reboot after displaying the Safe Mode driver list. Tried Normal Windows and it came up with the Windows Graphic, then went into a reboot.

Tried booting a Hirens CD and that booted into mini-XP fine. Have run various HDD surface tests from that any they seem to pass ok. However mini-ZP file manager cannot see the C drive and display, for example, its size and free space, it hangs (though I can get the size from other utilities).

I'm beginning to wonder whether there is a corrupted Windows system on the HDD, but don't see why that would stop the displaying of size & free space. Could the partition table be corrupt? But how would it manage to display the driver list or the Windows logo?

I've tried repairing the MBR but that made no difference.

I'm beginning to wonder whether it may be necessary / worth reformatting the drive and seeing if that brings it back to life.

Your collective wisdom would be appreciated.

[Apologies for replying to myself but it seemed to be the best way of replying to all]

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

If it doesn't get past BIOS it isn't a HDD problem causing the specific issue.. Unless the HDD is shorting out or something - extremely rare.

IDE drives can certainly stop a comp getting past BIOS.

Definitely try reformatting the drive and a clean reinstallation Windows - it wont cost anything other than perhaps your valuable time

Guess the owner had previously backed up important files before the machine became sick? If not you may still be able to transfer them onto another drive but I would certainly check them for any malware first.

No important stuff on there at all I believe - though will double check before trying a reformat and reinstall.

Sounds as though there may be OS corruption, possibly caused by HD failing.
Could boot from OS CD and reinstall windows. Before going down the format route.

Having tried various options on the Hirensboot CD this morning I booted form an XP disc and went into the Recovery Console. Ran FIXBOOT and FIXMBR and it now boots into Windows fine.

I'll be returning it this afternoon so will of course double check that it's all working.

Clearly there may be an HDD problem starting to emerge. I know the PC is not used for anything 'critical', web browsing and email is about it, so I'll copy any possibly useful files to a USB stick - just in case.

Murphy's Law strikes. Got it back, set it up, PC booted up into Windows just fine. But...

The screen wouldn't display, just the power light gently flashing saying no signal. Tried a spare screen and cable, still no joy. So have brought it all back. Clearly the graphics card must now be suspect. When time I'll remove and reseat, just in case.

That's the kind of behaviour you'd see on a card capable of running two screens (or two cards able to run together), where the bios thinks one is the primary and windows thinks the other one is.

The card only has a single VGA connection and worked fine while I was fixing the MBR & Partition Table. It's an old PC with very basic hardware, it does the job but the idea of running two screens would blow the owner's mind and certainly not one that this PC would need to do.

A very basic graphics card would be perfectly adequate for the user's needs. Though not sure where one would get a totally basic graphics card these days.

Depends if it's agp. I have an agp card, but it's only 32mb iirc.

eta: looks like they go pretty cheap on ebay.

Edited by deleted (Wed 25-Jan-12 17:05:01)