Shut down the machine fine last night, but it refuses to start up today. Goes through BIOS alright, then shows me a screen that reads:

"The last attempt to restart the sytem from its preveious location failed. Attempt to restart again?"
the choices are:
"Delete restoration data and proceed to system boot menu" and
"Continue with system restart""

Sounds good. However, the keyboard is frozen and I cannot choose either of the options. Nothing works.

I tried booting up from the XP CD-rom, but nothing happens, still goes to this screen.

I suspect I'm being stupid here. Can anyone tell me the problem?

Thanks!
Zepeda in Shanghai

reformat your drive if you can. Check your bios to see if your boot sequence is in the correct order. and when you try to boot from the xp cd make sure you select boot form cd in your boot selection menu. When loading your computer should tell you in the top screen what buttons to press they are usually F2 or F12 to get to your boot menu

You've probably done this, but remove and reinsert your keyboard connector at the back of the PC.

thanks, I tried all connections, keyboard is fine (it works in BIOS).

Mikeandike, are you suggesting that I need to reformat HD and erase everything? Seems like a drastic measure, no? BIOS seems normal, and I set to boot from CD first, still no results.

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "boot menu". Neither F2 nor F12 does anything. Is this something different from setting the boot sequence?

Does the fact that keyboard works in BIOS but not when this failed restart message pops up mean anything to you?

Is there any way - other than reset/restart - to manually re-boot, to override the failed restart?

Thanks!
Zepeda

An 'In-place upgrade' is what's needed:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp

I'm still stumped.

Went to the 'in-place upgrade' site, but all the upgrade choices seem to require that the machine be able to boot up...which is still out of reach.

Even booting up from the CD doesn't seem to work, even when I set the boot selection to CDROM.

Is there anything else I can do in BIOS, or before I get this frozen "attempt to restart" page?

I'm really stumped!

Thanks!
Zepeda

What sort of keyboard do you have? Is it USB or a PS/2 connector on the cord.

If it's USB, then try using a PS/2 keyboard instead. If it's PS/2, then the socket may be 'blown' if the keyboard cord has been dislodged at some stage with the sytem powered up.

Knowing the make and model number of your PC or of your motherboard would help here. (This is a hardware issue, by the sound of things) Specific details about your system's hardware will help us to give good advice, as BIOS options differ from system to system.

Thanks Catweazle,
I'll try switching the keyboard (using USB now, will try PS/2).

The computer is a bit of a mish-mash, built 2+ years ago in Hong Kong, old Soyo motherboard with socket 1, Celeron 566 CPU on an Asus S370-DL (I know, might be time to retire the whole thing), but has been working fine lately. Running XP SP-1, with most of the latest updates. I can't figure out the motherboard number.

Make sure it's powered OFF before you plug/unplug a PS/2 keyboard. They're not 'hot-pluggable'.

Dumb question, but I dont suppose you can boot in saftey mode (by pressing esc or F8 upon startup)

I had a friends computer that was presenting similar conditions in that it would just shutoff when it was booting up. If you can at least excess your computer in safety mode you can fix whats wrong.