Windows not booting correctly

[jamesny89]

Hey guys,

I was recently running a program on my pc when it suddenly crashed. When I started my pc back up an error msg popped up saying that it could not detect the hard drive. When i restrted my pc again it still wont go to windows. It gets stuck on a loading screen with the Windows logo. Can anyone suggests somethings that may help alleviate this problem???

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me

[jbennet]

What program?
How old is the PC?
What is the error message?
What happens if you leave it loading for over an hour?
Do you have your windows CD?
Is the hard disk SATA or IDE?

provide me with this information and i can assist you

[jamesny89]

The program:World of Warcraft/AIM
Age of PC: Approx 3or 4 years
Error Message: Driver cannot be detected or is missing
After an hour: pc is still trying to enter windows but isnt successful
I don't have my windows cd
The hard drive is IDE i think

[jbennet]

when it begins to start up hammer F8 repeatedly. If you can get to an option menu, choose Safe Mode. If this doesnt work you will need to look out your windows CD as it means that either

a: the bootloader is bad

b: the filesystem is massively corrupt

c: the OS is totalled - you will need to reinstall but a "repair" install might do the trick (this will hopefully keep your files)

d: the HDD is actually faulty

for all of these you will need an XP cd.

what brand is your PC by the way - some brands dont come with an OS CD, they come with a recovery partition. If options A or D are true then this is gone and you are in trouble.

[jamesny89]

ok after i try safe mode a bunch of these pops up
multidisk(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)Partition(1)WINDOWS/system32/_____
the blank represents various endings it has

[jbennet]

its meant to - if you wait a while then it will take you to a basic windows

the words are the drivers being loaded. safe mode only loads the basic microsoft drivers so that if there is a faulty driver which is stopping your system from running normally, it will not be loaded

from safe mode you aught to able to do a system restore back to before the problem began

dont worry if safe mode looks like crap ,it will do as it wont load your proper graphics driver, only a bog-standard generic one