Windows XP Boot Failture

[ZeratulsAvenger]

Ok, well my friend has been having some computer troubles lately. 1st it was a virus, then 400+ instances of malware, and now the computer boots to:
"We apologize for the inconvience but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or softwarre change might have caused this."
He said he tried all of the options given(Safeboot, W/Networkin, Last known good config, boot normally) and none worked.

From what I have seen, it looks like a repair install might fix it, but then I have to worry about the files that might be erased, as said by Microsoft and I don't know what might be there. I really would like a way to fix this without having to make a backup of anything since I dont want to open any of their computers if possible... People don't really like a 17 year old taking over 2 computers and ripping things out for 30 min or so I heard that one guy fixed it by doing a Windows boot disk and then running scandisk from dos. Does that sound promising?

Thanks for any help

EDIT:Oh ya, and no hardware was added or anything.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

Well I guess this is a long long long after bump?

I went over today because it started working for about a week or so I guess(he didnt restart at all durring that time) but then he got some windows updates and it wanted him to restart, so he did and now it is back to the black and white screen. None of the options work, they all just freeze or reboot it to that same point.

Any idea's on whether or not the Repair install would help, and if it did would it erase any documents since then I would have to transfer the hard drive over and back it all up.

Thanks a lot ahead of time.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

So does this mean no one knows? Sorry but I have yet to see many threads go completely untouched and I don't know what to tell my friend. I think tomorrow I am gonna go over there and backup all of his stuff and either try the repair install or a reformat. I really don't want to leave him with the job of reinstalling all of his applications though, but I certainly do not want to do it and really dont want to spend my 2nd to last day before school starts sitting at someone else's house installing applications. On my computer is one thing, I know what I need and have it. His is another altogether.

Any idea how to fix it so I dont have to reformat?

[Mesaeus]

First, you could start by running the repair console (boot from the setup cd, and choose R at the first question you get. You can then run Chkdsk /f or chkdsk /p (I seem to remember chkdsk /f won't work in the repair console, so it might be chkdsk /p). If that doesn't fix it, you might also want to run fixboot. That's all the useful commands I know for the repair console.

Now about a repair install. The link you provided is about a bug that may happen only in certain specific cases. In the Repair console, you can check for the presence of C:\Windows\system32\undo_guimode.txt, and delete that file if it exists. If it does not exist or you deleted it, that specific bug won't happen, so you can safely do a repair install. It should keep all your programs, but you'll need to reinstall SP1 (or SP2) and all hotfixes. The option for a repair install comes after you start a new install in XP setup, Setup will detect that there is a previous version and give you the option to repair it.

[dontstay]

i think it would have something to do with u removing the spyware... maybe the proggie removed a vital system file

[ZeratulsAvenger]

Awesome! Thanks a ton. Now I don't have to spend so long over there! Woo Hoo!!!

[dontstay]

hope it works./.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

Hmm... well more trouble arrose. He doesn't know the administrative password, and all the ones he or his dad know fail to work. Add that to the fact he doesn't know where his HP recovery CD is, I kinda am in the mood to tell him to figure it out himself... god... And then I tried making a boot disk and locating that file to make sure it wasnt there, but I was unable to find any windows folder. I cd to C: and that is the HP recovery partition, but there were no other "drives" i could change too... ugh... any ideas?