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My computer was running perfectly until yesterday; my internet suddenly died. Being wireless, I decided to reboot; now the computer doesn't boot. It shows the "Starting Windows" screen (safe mode loads several drivers), then it suddenly blue-screens and immediately reboots (I cannot read the blue-screen contents at all).

I've tried safe-mode (with and without networking); no dice. I booted another HD with another XP install and ran scandisk on my HDs; no bad sectors, and even with auto-repair, it didn't fix the problem.

Now what? What are my options to fix the broken XP install? I'm thinking:

1) Remove wireless card 2) Run XP install CD and repair installation 3) ???

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Here is a site that tells how to disable the auto-reboot after a BSOD, this should make it easier to see what is causing the blue screen.

http://www.technibble.com/how-to-disable-automatic-restart-for-bsod-if-you-are-unable-to-get-into-windows/

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  • More applicable to my situation since I can't do it through BIOS.
    – ashes999
    Commented Dec 29, 2010 at 19:12
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Remove wireless card and see if it will boot. No repair yet, that is a next to last resort.

If no joy use F8 at boot time and choose "disable automatic restart on system failure"

Copy and post the entire error code and message, edit your post to include this info.

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  • Why is repairing a last resort? What kind of side-effects does it have?
    – ashes999
    Commented Dec 28, 2010 at 3:41
  • When I had my laptop crashing upon restart every time, using a different driver for my on-board wireless ethernet card solved it (either download a new driver or an old one, as long as it isn't the same version as the one you are using now). But I was unable to do it without re-installing XP, which you want to avoid.
    – Cerberus
    Commented Dec 28, 2010 at 4:40
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    @ ashes999, Nest to last, last resort is a clean install. When you repair, you need to use a XP cd that has the same service pack level as your current installation, even when you do this it will remove all windows updates that came after that SP, so this would mean over 100 updates to re-do, and most of the time a repair does not fix the issue, so it can be a huge waste of time, it is better to try other diagnosis first.
    – Moab
    Commented Dec 28, 2010 at 11:23
  • I hate Dell BIOSes. There's no option to disable it. For some reason, I couldn't figure out how to repair, so I ended up reinstalling.
    – ashes999
    Commented Dec 29, 2010 at 19:12
  • If you think Dell is bad try a consumer grade HP bios, bare bones as it gets.
    – Moab
    Commented Dec 29, 2010 at 23:46

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