Help: Problem loading Windows XP

[Tygrrlyli]

Hello. My mom's computer is glitching. She turned it on and it loaded normally until the desktop at which point the screen started trying to re-load repeatedly. Windows came up with an error message saying it had hit an infinite loop and to try restarting.
(Note: Unfortunately my mom did not write down A. the error message, B. the instructions should a restart not work.)
She restarted and the computer hit the same restart thing again on loading the desktop. This time it did not give an error message or instructions on how to fix it.
We restarted in Safe Mode and the blinking did not happen.
We thought it might be the video card, but if it's the video card, wouldn't it blink in Safe Mode as well as regular boot-up?
I was able to run HJT if that might help any?
Please let me know if anyone has any ideas. Thank you very much in advance.

[memomk]

duh it is windows i format mine once every month

[JorgeM]

Some options for you...

1. You can try to boot into safe mode and perform a system restore to a pint in time where the system was stable.
2. You could boot from the CD, and go through the installation process, but choose to do a Windows Repair installation.
3. You can do a clean installation of Windows.
4. If you have "Recovery CDs" that came with the computer, you could boot off of them and restore the system to the default installation.

Personally, #3 or #4 is the best option when you start encountering these types of issues with Windows. A clean installation will resolve these types issues, and is usually the quicket approach.

[memomk]

yup and i guess win xp is not so ummm recomended anymore you should move on to seven coz all the programmers start programing for win 7 "like mozilla firefox it is not supported on win xp anymore" so if the recovery didn't work formate it to win 7 if u like

[gerbil]

Firefox in future will not support XP orig and XP-SP1. SP3 is still supported.
Tygr, start your machine, press F8 a few times during the BIOS stage and if the Advanced option screen opens, check the box against Disable Auto restart on errors.
Then give us the code that comes up when Windows fails.
The vid card... no, it would not necessarily blink in Safe mode.

[Reverend Jim]

Safe mode boots into VGA (basic video) so if your video card is the problem it likely won't show up in safe mode. You might try running MSCONFIG, going to the boot.ini tab and selecting the SOS option (I'm doing this from memory). The SOS option will replace the boot-time idiot light display (which tells you nothing) with a logged display of the drivers as they are loaded. If there is a problem it is likely related to the last driver that was displayed. You can leave SOS always enabled. It won't slow your boot time significantly if at all.

[jean122]

If Windows hangs in a infinite loop, it's likely a windows problem.
The best option is to make a backup of the documents,format the harddrive and reinstall windows

if that doesn't work, it can be a hardware problem, you should test your RAM if you think its the hardware.

hope this helps

Gr Jeannot