Windows XP won't boot

[ECO 0]

The boot process goes as far as just after the screen with the XP logo and the horizontal loading bar, then the screen goes black. At this point the computer hangs. It's not an issue of corrupt video drivers cuz i uninstalled them and tried to boot in VGA mode, and that didn't change a thing. I made an ERD a lil while back, but I don't have my Windows XP cd right now because one of my brothers borrowed it. Any suggestions would be great.

[DosFreak 2]

Usually drivers are loading just before XP loads into the GUI. I would say it's a driver problem, unfortunately since you don't have the XP CD you can't even boot into recovery mode.

 

You could try the standard "Hit F8", and choose "Last known good"...but that most likely won't work in your case.

 

Did you install or do anything before this happened?

Do you have a backup?

 

if you had your XP CD, I'd boot into recovery mode, edit your boot.ini and add this line:

 

/BOOTLOG

Causes Windows to write a log of the boot to the file %SystemRoot%\Ntbtlog.txt.

 

 

Example:

 

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /Bootlog

 

Then you could possible track down the problem.

 

Unfortunately doing a repair install most likely won't help since the driver that's likely causing the issue will still load.

[ECO 0]

I tried bootlogging, but it won't make a log for the regular boot attempt to Windows, it only logs the boot into Safe Mode, where I don't find it unusual that the log states many drivers not being loaded.