Windows Loading Freeze

[DJ_Quaaludes]

Hey gang,

I'm at wits end with this thing, was wondering if someone may be able to help. Recently my Windows XP crashed, and upon reboot, it now "hangs" at the Windows loading screen (before the login). I have tried using last known good configuration, and safe modes, and nothing works.

I tried using my recovery CD to recover from the hard drive backup, but all I get is a #50 Read Error message, then it shuts down.

I have also tried re-installation of windows through said recovery CD, but both the recovery console process and reinstallation process freeze when the message "Examining 156.... MB Hard Drive on...."

Any clue as to what the problem may be? Im inclined to think it has something to do with my hard-drives. The original freeze occured when opening multiple programs shortly after a defrag of the drive, but the defrag did not pick up on any bad sectors. I've tried booting MS-DOS and running CHKDSK, but all it says for my C: and D: drives is "Cannot run CHKDSK on a Network Drive". I dont understand what this means, as they are not Network Drives.

[mechbas]

It isn't the purpose of defrag to diag. the drive. The CHKDSK error happens frequently when the OS has a prob. accessing the drive (when not found it assumes the drive is on a network and not local). If you can copy the wpa.dbl *.bak to a floppy, boot from the install CD and Install the OS in the same location on the drive. You've probably got bad file locations due the bad defrag. Hopefully your registry files are intact.
When you do get it up and running burn an old addage into your own CPU, "backup, backup, backup, etc." Saves a lot of grief later.

[jbennet]

try hitting f8 repeatedly on bootup and choosing safe mode