[iluvmybbw]

Good evening.I am helping a friend with an older emachine that has xp sp 2 installed.When you start the computer it boots all the way to the login screen with all the users then you hear a clang from inside the computer then it restarts.It'll go into safe mode.I ran spybot and adaware from my thumb drive but they both couldn't fix all of the listed problems.Tried to do a disk check but it would stop due too "unspecified error".The hard drive is only a little over 6gigs with 15% free space(after cleanup from safe mode)Got it defraging now(gonna take all nite)

Like I said this is an older machine as my g/f had one just like it and hers had windows 98 on it original.Not sure if my friend upgraded to xp or it she bought it like this.Says it was working fine up until a couple weeks ago.If anyone has any ideas I sure would appreciate all of your time and help.....thanks a lots!!!!!

 

[Jackiefrost9]

Sounds like a failing hard drive to me, the "clang" says its not software related. 6 gigs is barely enough to run xp, im impressed lol.

If you have another hard drive with an OS on it, plug that into the computer and see what data you can get from the failing drive, back up all of her files from the drive, or at least just the ones she wants.

If you want, you can try re-installing XP but i dunno how far that will get you. I guess its worth a try though.

 

[iluvmybbw]

LOL yeah.....6 gigs for xp and I believe it only has 32 mb of ram too!!!Well when I got the cover off I found that it had a second drive in there too.After figuring out which was the boot drive I removed the extra drive and put in an old 15 gig I had laying around.After i couldn't get the system to recognize it I decided to go ahead and put in my Data Life tool floppy.Was able to get it to the point of copying files from the bad drive over to the other one. Gonna take a bit but if I can get the 15 jumpered right I believe it just might work!!!!Thanks for your time!!

 

[Jackiefrost9]

Glad to be of some help, lol wonder what other stuff she threw into that computer...

Isn't the minimum amount of RAM for xp 128MB? Maybe thats why it won't start... sounds like its time for a new computer!

 

[iluvmybbw]

Well got the new drive in and got it to boot up but after rebooting sucker still does the same thing minus the clanging sound!!!!!While I had it running noticed she doesn't have any antivirus running at all and also no firewall.When I get back from work gonna try to get it to boot using norton antivirus.Hopefully this will get it done.

 

[Cheeseball81]

I actually thought 256MB of ram was the minimum for XP?

 

[Jackiefrost9]

It's 128MB, but shes still way under the minimum. Do you happen to have a stick of RAM somewhere that you could throw in it?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/sysreqs.mspx

 

[iluvmybbw]

As luck would have it I did have extra ram.Brought it up to 256 and still the same thing happens

 

[Jackiefrost9]

only thing I can think of now (besides a new computer lol) is re-installing it.

 

[iluvmybbw]

Well I got it working!!!It seems after doing A LOT of research the MBR somehow got screwed up.My guess would be by virus' as she had about 15 different ones on her system!!

Used my xp pro disk to get the recovery console and ran the fixboot and fixmbr commands and all got back to normal.Once got it running ran adaware spybot and symantec antivirus corporate edition and got it all cleaned up.Now it seems good to go.Thanks for all your help!!!