XP not starting

[jag007]

Hello All,
One of my friend swithed off his pc directly from power supply(accidently).
And now he is not able start his pc.
When he starts his PC, screen comes saying that last time pc was not properly shutdown, with start options in safe mode, safe mode with networking, normal mode etc., but not able to start pc in any of these modes, as pc goes till welcome window and restarts again. Has XP got corrupted?
Should I hv to reinstall/format windows? What things I should try first before finally fomatting PC(my last option).
Pls put your suggetions, it will be better if I don't hv to fomat the PC.
Thanks in advance.
Bregds..........
()

 

[boomerang]

Google "XP Recovery Console" and follow the directions to get into the recovery console. From there, run "chkdsk /r" by typing it as it appears here (spaces included no quotes) and hitting the enter key. It will take a good long while to run.

 

[johnny.dacu]

Or booting sector was damages somehow. from the recovery console too you may try fix mbr sector.

 

[Devilpapaya]

bommerang's and johnny's suggestions are right on, but also, what error code is it giving you when it shuts down. If the computer is not shutting down due to power failure or overheating it should give a blue screen with an error code. A lot of the time this goes by in a few milliseconds, but you can disable automatic restart to give you time to read over it.

To disable auto restart: hit f8 (repeatedly) on start-up and it should bring you a list of startup options; find the option "disable automatic restart of system failure" and click that. Now the blue screen should start up until you manually restart the computer.

What you're looking for on the Blue screen, is an error code, it will appear in 1 or 2 forms. Either as text like:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

and or as a hexadecimal error code

0x00000007B (0xFFFFFFFF, 0xFFFFFFFF, 0xFFFFFFFF, 0xFFFFFFFF)
(these will be longer on a 64-bit OS)

The important number to record is the first set, the numbers/letters outside the parentheses. These error codes can be googled and will (generally) give you a pretty idea of what the issue is (hardware, driver, etc.). Sometimes you'll get a really generic error that won't help much, but it's always a good place to start.

 

[jag007]

Hello All,
Thanks for all u guys help.
Boot sector was currpted, I rewrote bootsector using winxp cd and this problem is now solved.
Thank u all for valuable suggestions.
Bregds..........
()