XP Won't Boot

[ROYP123]

I carried my neighbors Dell 8200 to my house to put in a second hard drive, but first I turned it on and no boot.
I never used XP, so I don't know what it is supposed to do.
The screen does the white bar advancing left to right and when it it solid, it goes to the Win XP page. The small white cursor keeps moving left to right in the bar, but it keeps doing it forever . I rebooted, and if I don't go to Safe Mode, it does the same thing. If I go to Safe mode, it scrolls through many many driver files, then stops.. no more action. If I try to go to the " last time it worked okay " it looks like it tries to restore, then hangs at the same place it does on a normal boot.
The neighbor says it worked when I picked it up.
What do I need to do to boot.? Thanks

[bailey]

if that system was on a network then it is just looking for it,
it is possible that if you took it back to his house it will work ok

but I could be wrong too.

eather way it is looking for something that was in the first setting and is not finding it know.

[Cricket]

Open up the case and make sure everything inside is connected or inserted properly. Maybe something came loose when you moved the PC.

I don't know why it went through a driver list while in Safe Mode since Safe Mode doesn't use any virtual drivers.

Are you using the same type of mouse and keyboard (PS/2 or USB)?

Cricket

[ROYP123]

It was not on a network.

I don't know if it used a usb mouse/keyboard or not. I will check. I just used ps2 mouse-keyboard.

I will open it and see if something came loose.

If I were using Win98 I would use a start up disk to check it out. Win XP does not have a start up disk, does it?
Thanks

[ROYP123]

I took it back and hooked it up next door... same symptoms. No usb keyboard, but it did have cordless mouse and keyboard.
The keyboard works at my house, but I have not seen the mouse yet.. don't know if I would have seen mouse activity yet.
Perhaps I knocked something loose during moving it. Plugs, cords, ram, etc. looks okay, not loose. I guess the video card would not be loose, since I get the XP screen okay. I will check again. Cricket, I don't see why the drivers would list when I try to go into safe mode. I will try to write down some on the list.

[WSW]

If you have a startup floppy disk, you can try to isolate the problem by powering up the computer with minimum configuration, i.e. only the floppy drive, video card, keyboard and mouse. Do not connect the hard disk, CD drive or network. You might have to go into Bios to set it to put from floppy. Let us know whether you still have the small white cursor that moves left to right in the bar.

If the minimum configuration is working, the computer should boot into DOS.

If the computer boots with minimum configuration, you can assume that the motherboard, video card, keyboard and mouse are working fine.

You can then add back the hard disk, CD drive and network card one at a time.

Again, you might have to set the Bios to boot from hard disk.

[andyms18a]

Originally posted by ROYP123 The neighbor says it worked when I picked it up.

did you see it work befor you picked it up ? if not he may have had a problam all ready

[ROYP123]

I booted with a Win 98 boot disk, but it said the hard drive does not have fat 32. I assume that the XP is using NTSF.
I booted with a Dell diagnostic disk and it checked mouse-keyboard - ide 0 -1. all okay. I thought I might find a place on the disk to do a system restore, but could not find. I tried the XP disk to do a repair function, but it asked for an administrator password, and after 3 attempts , closed me out. I can't believe they used an administrator password ( mom and pop) I can't reload Win XP without killing their data can I ??
All I can think of is to put the HDD in another computer to see if it boots. I still have not listed the driver info when it tries to go to Safe Mode. Tomorrow.

[andyms18a]

when the computer is sitting with the small curser moving from left to right let it sit for 5 minits then try pressing ctrl alt delete and see if it dose any thing

[ROYP123]

I put in a small HDD with Win 98 on it, and it booted right up. I disconnected everything and started from scratch. It had a zip drive slaved to the HDD and cd-rom is alone. After I removed the zip drive, it booted. I have no idea why the prob.
I put in the 2nd HDD on IDE #2 . As soon as I connected the zip-same prob. I left it disconnected.
They said it was working when I got it, but last week they took it to a comp shop to fix a prob. He could not fix it, so they said he created a new user, and got it working that way without fixing the prob.( for $ 75) ( I am free) I bet that is why it would not start in Safe Mode, because the driver list that flashed, then froze when I tried, all said...partition 2 and listed the drivers. I put a clean install on the 2nd drive, and will recommend they xfer the data, then redo drive # 1.
I have resisted XP since it came out, but I guess if I plan to keep messing with friends computers, I better learn the software. I have XP Home from Newegg arriving today, so I will put it on my second computer and learn. Maybe I will learn about " new users" and see what their original prob was. Thanks