Member Avatar for Grum

Hi there, hope you guys can help. im at the end of my rope with this!

I'm having some issues with my toshiba satellite laptop. Everytime I turn it on i get the normal windows screen with the progress bar at the bottom as if its booting fine, then the whole screen turns black for about a minute and i get a nice message saying that windows has failed to start because it has experienced a power cut or wasn't shut down correctly etc etc (in this case what happened was i had turned it on and while it was booting up i started moving it the laptop, the psu fell out the back and sinec there was no battery in it at the time it just turned off)

anyway, it gives me the usual options like do you want to try running windows as normal, use last working configuration, safe mode, safe mode with networking etc etc etc but having tried them all several times and all of them end up just going to the windows xp starting screen for a minute, then going black for a minute, then a blue screen (not the dreaded blue screen of death though) with some white text on it which appears then diappears in half a second so I can't tell what it says (helpful) and then just reverts to the screen asking about safe mode and use last working settings etc etc again. if i leave it alone on this screen it tries to just restart windows automatically in 30 seconds. i left it in this cycle all night hoping it would magically work but the next morning it was still stuck restarting windows, failing to boot, waiting 30 secs, restarting windows


when i try booting using safe mode it seems to get stuck while doing something in the config folder, which makes me think ive corrupted something in the registry. i can't seem to find my xp disk anywhere at the moment or else i'd have tried to boot/repair using that. anyone got any ideas?

If you need anymore info just let me know...

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by oph

Dani AI

Generated

described the classic symptom set for sudden-power-off during boot: Windows gets partway through the splash/progress phase, then a black screen and a brief STOP/blue message before looping back to the F8 recovery choices. That sequence — plus Safe Mode stalling in the “\config” area — most often points to corrupted core registry hives or filesystem damage on the system volume. ’s note about a fleeting blue screen reinforces that a STOP code (or disk errors) is being raised; ’s suggestion to use install/recovery media is still the simplest full-repair route when available.

Recommended, low-risk next steps (in order of priority):

  • Confirm the BIOS/UEFI lists the internal drive (setup key varies by model). If the drive isn’t detected, treat it as hardware first.
  • Capture the BSOD text (F8 → “Disable automatic restart on system failure” or photograph the screen) so any STOP code can guide repair choices.
  • Boot from external rescue media (Linux live USB, WinPE/BartPE, or a reputable rescue disc) to run a disk surface/SMART check and to access files. Running a filesystem check can often repair corruption caused by abrupt power loss.
  • If Safe Mode hangs in the config/registry phase, an offline replacement of the five core hives (DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM) from C:\Windows\Repair into C:\Windows\System32\Config (after backing up the originals) is a commonly used recovery method — this must be performed from a boot environment and may lose recent settings, so back up user data first.

If the drive shows bad sectors, clicking sounds, or fails diagnostics, image or copy important data by removing the drive and attaching it to another PC (USB-SATA adapter) and consider professional recovery if the disk is physically failing. If install media is available, the XP Recovery Console / Repair install remains the cleanest repair path, but the offline hive-replacement and disk checks above are the usual, practical alternatives before reinstalling.

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Member Avatar for dcc

If you have the installation CD you can use that to run a repair. You will want to go to the BIOS and make your CD-ROM the first device in the boot order so that when you insert the CD and restart the computer it will boot from that CD. Once the disc start it should give you an option to make a repair rather than a installation, use that choice.

Member Avatar for damien123

i have the exact same problem, and i don't no where the cd is, so is there any other way of fixing it.

p.s i also found that if u press start windows normally, then immediately press f8, it gives you mre options, an if you press disable restert on system failure, the it comes up with a blue stop error scrren, which says things like, check disk space and driver updates, but it doesnt help because the computer restarts every time.

please help!!

Member Avatar for oph

did u ever fix this problem? I have the exact same issue and in need of help!!!!

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