windows keeps reloading

[dummy2001]

Last night the box worked fine, today it starts loading XP for a while then restarts itself, starts loading XP a while then restarts itself, ad nauseum...

"Load last working config" does the same thing.
On Safe mode it hangs at the line with "giveio.sys"

Using a BartPE disc it boots into XP fine, the primary disc shows up but I can't access it due to "I/O device error". So I can't just re-image it. I assume the I/O stuff means there's a problem moving data between the disc and the MB. I took the SATA cable out, flipped it around, no improvement. All I can think is to buy another SATA cable, I doubt if I can even install XP again if I can't access the disc. Bad disc or MB? Other suggestions?

 

[dummy2001]

Well I can't even reinstall windows, it sees the disc but then hangs very early on "examining the disc..." when I start the install process. Is this a bad disc, motherboard, or sata cable? I don't have another sata computer to swap them out and test them individually, all I can think is to replace them one at a time, starting with the least expensive. Any other ideas?

 

[Swampster]

Plug the drive into a different SATA port. That will put you on another controller, and thus eliminate it as a problem.

If this has no effect, then use another computer to download an diagnostic ISO file from your HDD's manufacture and burn it to a CD and, booting from the newly created CD, you will be able to check out the drive and cable, etc. It will give you a failure code and from that the manufacturer's site will tell you what is wrong.

 

[dummy2001]

Thanks much. I actually remembered I had a Western Digital cd, the quick test showed no problems but the full test found and fixed problems and here I am, back in business like nothing happened. I just assumed there had to be hardware failure when windows installer couldn't do anything, but I'm happy it was (apparently) so simple.