Blue Screen of Death error- Win XP Pro

Brian?

My PC is currently caught in a loop of BSOD's when I try to boot up, it starts loading windows and I get a flash of a BSOD and it reboots. No idea what the error actually is because it reboots too quickly.

The first thing I decided to try was to stick in the installation CD and I was going to try and do a repair from there. For some reason I can't understand the PC will not boot from the CD but tries to start windows each time. I checked the boot config in setup and the first preference is CD. I disconnected my primary HDD and it boots from the CD fine, but thats not a lot of use to me.

My primary HDD is a 500gig Samsung SATA drive. I am not running RAID or any fanciness like that.

If I can get it to boot from the CD with the primary HDD connected I think I can deal with anything from there, can anyone help at all?

Ponster

Your BSOD could also be a hardware (memory?) problem.



As for your booting problem:

When booting up, you normally get an option to boot into the bios by pressing ESC/F10/F12 but you alsoshould have a key (usually F8) to bring up the boot menu. Here you can choose which device to boot from no matter what the bios settings say.
If you do this yet don't see the CD drive as an option then you have a motherboard/driver issue I'd guess.

How did you originally manege to install Windows? Has any hardware changed since?

Are you sure that the XP CD that you have is bootable and not one that you need to install from an existing XP installation?

Brian?

Ponster wrote: »

Your BSOD could also be a hardware (memory?) problem.

I know, thats what I'm afraid of. I have installed any new hardware since I built the PC last December though, so I hope its not.

Ponster wrote: »

As for your booting problem:

When booting up, you normally get an option to boot into the bios by pressing ESC/F10/F12 but you alsoshould have a key (usually F8) to bring up the boot menu. Here you can choose which device to boot from no matter what the bios settings say.
If you do this yet don't see the CD drive as an option then you have a motherboard/driver issue I'd guess.

How did you originally manege to install Windows? Has any hardware changed since?

Are you sure that the XP CD that you have is bootable and not one that you need to install from an existing XP installation?

There is no option for boot up except F8 to enter Setup, in setup my dvd drive is selected as boot device 1. As I said I can boot fine from the CD once I disconnect my primary HDD.

Its a bootable CD alright, no doubt about it.

MunsterCycling

Motherboard make and model, also the DVD drive just to rule out a bios issue.

MC

Brian?

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Motherboard make and model, also the DVD drive just to rule out a bios issue.

MC

Asus P5B-V, G965, Socket-775, ATX, VGA, GbLAN, SATAII, DDR2, Firew, 2xPCI-Ex16.

NEC DVD recorder ND-3500A IDE White

Brian?

Rightio, I just got it to boot from CD by disabling the HDD in Setup. I should have known that though.

No for that pesky blue screen..........

Ponster

Cool. F8 *should* have worked though and says so in the Asus P5B-V manual.

Good luck with the BSOD.

Gadgetman496

briankeating wrote: »

Rightio, I just got it to boot from CD by disabling the HDD in Setup. I should have known that though.

No for that pesky blue screen..........

Now that you have access to the system you should set Windows to NOT shutdown or restart on error.

This should allow you to view the details of the blue screen error the next time it happens.

How to:

1. Click Start, and then right-click My Computer.
2. Click Properties.
3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings under Startup and Recovery
4. Under System failure, click to clear the Automatically restart check box.
5. Click OK, and then click OK.
6. Try to reproduce the error message.