XP won't boot. Please help!

murphaph

Hi all,
I'm having trouble booting windows XP. The computer had water get into it through the case fan but that seems to have dried up now as I can get it to boot in safe mode with graphics. It looks like the original graphics card bought it (most of the water landed on it), as the display was dead until I put in a replacement.

So now it just hangs when booting XP normally at the 'progress bar' thingy stage. Screen just freezes and that's it.

I don't know much about software other than system restore, installing XP that sort of thing but I poked around the 'administration tools' and found the 'event viewer'. In there in the 'system' events tab I found numerous errors about various drivers failing to start, these include;

(Under 'service control manager' source)
MRxSm
NetBIOS
NetBT
P3
RasAcd
Rdbss
Tcpip

It lists an event ID as 7026

I'd appreciate any pointers as to how to get this thing back working again. Thanks very much!

Karoma

What card was in it before the accident, and what card is in it now?
Did you properly uninstall the previous drivers and properly install the correct drivers for this card?

murphaph

The card that's in it now was originally in it when the machine was given to me. It began making noise (fan bearings) and I slotted in a cheap eBay matrox card into it (it's not a games machine ). I did nothing with drivers as I assume the drivers for the card currently in it are still on the machine from when it was installed originally. I didn't remove divers for the cheap matrox card though. Could this be a issue? In the old days I'd have tried to boot from a floppy but I gather you can't do that in XP, or can you?

Optikus

If you can get into Windows i'd suggest backing up everything you need and then do a fresh windows install.

murphaph

Yeah, that's probably what I'll do but I need to get my XP disc back from a friend first. Was hoping there'd be an easier way.

hopeful

This is a little off topic...but I'd love to know how you managed to get water into your PC via a fan.

I only ask because I managed to do similar althought it was my cat peeing on it for me...hence I now do not have my PC on the floor

murphaph

hopeful wrote:

This is a little off topic...but I'd love to know how you managed to get water into your PC via a fan.

PC was on table. Small bowl of water on floor. Brother trod on edge of bowl and the water was thrown up and sucked in by the fan, believe it or not!

hopeful

murphaph wrote:

PC was on table. Small bowl of water on floor. Brother trod on edge of bowl and the water was thrown up and sucked in by the fan, believe it or not!

And then brother punched in head?

Laguna

hopeful wrote:

And then brother punched in head?

then brother die.

Optikus

You should uninstall your previous grahpics card driver, then install drivers for the one your now using. Also check in device manager that your network card or onboard LAN is working correctly, as those errors are net based. Reinstall the needed network drivers to see if this helps, or try a different network card to pin point the problem.

murphaph

Optikus, you were right. I ended up formatting and reinstalling and as things were hanging up on the reinstall I took the system to minimum configuration and it proceeded smoothly. Once I started putting dimms and peripherals back in I found the problem-wireless network PCI card!! Water had gotten down under the RF shield on it and had fried some caps and resistors and shorted things to each other (not visible without dismantling the card). With that card out it runs fine, with it in in any slot with no other PCI cards in it won't boot. Arrrghh, need to buy a new one now, feckin brothers eh! He comes round to my house and wrecks me stuff!!:D