Booting computer freezes, and in a giant loop

[headdyb]

I am trying to fix a computer for a friend of mine, and having a lot of trouble. She game me a giant bundle of CD's, including a cd-r version of her windows restore disk, and a floppy that has "emergency repair" written on it. The original problem was the computer would load to the login screen, and freeze after about 10 seconds, not even receiving ctrl+alt+del commands. I tried loading from every option in the safe mode menu, where it would freeze on the loadup screen every time. I tried going in through the BIOS and booting directly from the CD where i receive an error message that is the same when I try to load from the floppy. After I did all that, now it starts a giant loop after the black windows loading screen it turns itself off, and restarts the booting sequence, up until the black screen, then repeats the process all over again. I am completely lost on this issue, can anyone help?

[bobbyraw]

what is the error message u are getting?

[headdyb]

non-system disk or disk error

[bobbyraw]

what the laptop boot up select the option for boot sequence. probable F1 F2 F8 F11 and choose to boot from cd, if u still get the error message, check the cd for scratches and check the cd drive make sure it is connected properly(if it's a ejectable drive bay) and check to make sure the laser is clean. lastly make sure the cd or floppy is bootable

[headdyb]

how do I boot from CD? when i press F8 it bring me to the windows 2000 advanced options menu with the following options...

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Enable Boot Logging
Enable VGA Mode
Last Known Good Configuration
Directory Services Restore Mode (Windows 2000 domain controllers only)
Debugging Mode

Boot Normally

Have trial all options and send me back to the original loadup screen.

One mistake i said earlier was that the CD also caused the error message, that was because i left the floppy in, just the CD says "Boot from CD:" twice with no other message, then continues back into the loadup loop

Also how would I check to see if the floppy is bootable?

[bobbyraw]

i am not sure what option u would use for your laptop, just before the the pc POST or go into the bios and set the cd as the first boot option.

as for chacking the floppy u would eed another pc to do that either by looking at the files on the floppy (IO.sys,command.com and config.sys) are some of the file that should be on the floppy (they may be hidden) or power up the pc sitht he floppy in the drive but he bios would have to be set to boot from floppy as the first option.

[headdyb]

sorry if i said it was a laptop, this is a desktop that the problem is with. when i set the BIOS to boot from CD it still gives me the two "Boot from CD:" prompts, then continues immediately to the black starting windows screen, then once the bar at the bottom completes the computer shuts off and starts the whole process over again?

[bobbyraw]

try pressing enter to see if it will boot from the cd when u get the prompt

[headdyb]

doesn't seem to work, still the same problem on continuing to windows load screen

[bobbyraw]

is this cd bootable??????

[gthotmail]

doesn't seem to work, still the same problem on continuing to windows load screen

Headdyb, I had the same issue with my client's laptop. I tried doing Recovery by using the XP boot CD and guess what, the recovery was in a giant loop also.

I tried wiping out the whole drive but it wasn't successful. I guess my HD was broken.
Anyway, I didn't find a solution to it, but I want to wish you good luck.