Windows XP not booting up properly

I am me123

Hi,

I have a particularly old -ish pc. (XP). Today, out of nowhere, upon powering it up, I was met with the "Canon" home screen that should usually appear for a second then finish booting up, but now it won't progress any further than this point.

I should mention that I use a USB hub with this PC, that has malfunctioned at times also.

Any suggestions for a fix here?

Spear

Boot in safe mode and see if it can at least manage that.

I am me123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121913968#Comment_121913968

Thanks for that.

Turns out that a CD left in the CD drive caused the boot issue above.

Once that was removed, the issue resolved itself, then the PC booted normally.

Any idea why a CD in the drive would cause a boot issue, as described?

Thank you

RobertFoster

You can set the boot order in the BIOS, so maybe the CD drive is set higher than the HDD and it was trying to boot from the disc.

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914420#Comment_121914420

It if it was trying to boot from the CD, it may have had issues doing so. Which may mean the CD drive has failed, or hopefully it's just a dud disc.

SuperBowserWorld

Just as a warning, an old OS like that will leave you open to a lot of security problems. You might be able to run a up to date Linux OS on the PC, but it depends on what software you need.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914453#Comment_121914453

Well if it’s trying to boot from a CD that’s not got the OS it wouldn’t mean either. It’s just trying to boot to an OS it can’t find.

Easy to check if disc drive works or not anyway just use it once you’re booted into windows and see

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914513#Comment_121914513

It should fail to find a bootable image on the disc and move on the next boot device, not stay stuck at it though.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914515#Comment_121914515

I thought the same applied if the drive is non responsive though? 🤔 could be it just locked up when it failed to find an OS to boot?

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121914585#Comment_121914585

No, if it can't find a boot sector on the CD, it should move to the next entry on the configured boot list, which is most likely the hard drive. There's also usually a time out for non-responsive devices, but that's not guaranteed. But if the drive was responding and the CD could be read, it shouldn't have hung at that point.