xp system won't start

[erucader]

Hi. I have a computer that restarted suddenly and then went to the "we apologize for the inconvenience, but windows failed to start normally..." screen. I don't know what caused it since I don't use that machine regularly. Anyways it turns out selecting any of the options (safe mode, lkgc, start windows normally) all have the same effect; the screen goes blank and the system reboots to the same screen. Short of reformatting the drive, I have no clue how to fix this. Any hints?

[pam123]

Do you have an XP cd to do a system repair with?

[erucader]

yeah... is repair install the best option?

[pam123]

Yes.
Even if you just got a massive malware infection we can't tell anything if you can't get windows to load and, from your description, it's an XP problem not a hardware one.
You'll have to redo updates and drivers but you won't lose any data.

[erucader]

Alright well I've got it to boot back into Windows... I'd still like to figure out what caused the problem though to prevent it from happening again. What can I do about malware besides running antivirus & AdAware?

[jayb1234]

One of the biggest things to prevent malware is to make sure you always use a firewall, either the Windows one or a 3rd party one like Zonealarm.

[Mesaeus]

I kinda disgree, a firewall is not the most important defense against malware. It's defense is almost 100% against worms, programs that try to break into Windows XP through faults in certain running services on XP, and hackers who use certain tools to do the same. Although there have been a few large worms like Blaster and Sasser, most danger comes through email (virusses) and malformed webpages (spyware). It's a handy extra to have for sure, but a virus scanner (for email) and anti spyware program like spywareblaster (for spyware) is much more important. The most important is to keep Windows XP as up to date as possible, so make sure SP2 and all further patches are installed.