Windows XP doesn't finish booting

[Revolver_XS]

I was testing an application I was working on, which required intensive CPU usage(It was also reading from a file a lot). To speed things up a little, I set the process priority of this program to realtime(big mistake). I didn't realize that this would render my system unusable until the program finished its tasks, since it was using 100% CPU. It would have still taken hours for it to finish, I didn't want to wait that long, so I hit the reboot button on the front of my computer(Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing). When it tried rebooting, the POST was successful, and the WinXP loading screen came on. I got no errors at all, and I could tell it was in the final stages of booting because the light on my optical mouse turned on, and the sound in my headphones started up(Not the XP welcome message, just background white noise of my headphones when they are powered). After this, the screen went black for about 2 seconds, and then the system restarted. The first time, I didn't think too much of it, some times WinXP has failed to boot on the first try, but fixed whatever the problem was and was successful on the second. Well, after waiting for it to reboot 5 times, nothing changed. It always appeared to be loading successfully, then suddenly reboots in the last stages. I get no error message whatsoever. I have never overclocked any of my components, and did not change any hardware of configuration settings before this started happening. I also tried booting in safe mode, and with the last known good configurations, but both did the same thing.


Here is the list of things you requested
1) Windows XP Professional SP1
2) AMD Athlon 2400+, 512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR, 40GB Western Digital Caviar 7200 RPM Drive, ATI Radeon 8500 LE 128MB
3) (Explained above)
4) No error messages
5) No antivirus or firewall software running

I appreciate any help you can give me

[augie2]

Well first we have to stop it from rebooting. On your next boot change your BIOS to boot from CD. Do so and start a new install. Next screen will give you options. Take repair install. This will preserve your data.

Then when your are hopefully in check your event viewer. Also run msconfig and in startup tab uncheck the culprit.. BTW the event viewer may give some idea what happened.

Also change your boot option to not reboot. This may give you an error message to work with. I can't recall where it is atm, but someone else will.

HTH and good luck

augie

[Revolver_XS]

I did a search of these forums and found a link to a microsoft.com article that sounded like it might fix it. I had to use the cd to get to the recovery console, then backup the registry files, then copy some 'recovery' registry files into their place. They suggested copying/pasting the batch commands into a batch file, and executing them. I did this, but they did not mention the *sarcastic* small fact that you had to copy this batch file to the windows folder before running it. I should have known better, but I didn't think about it, and ran the batch file from the floppy disk. The first command it executed was to create a temporary directory to back up the registry in. Well, it didn't have an absolute path defined, it was relative. So the batch file created the temporary directory on the floppy! The rest of the commands(copy,delete,copy) all had absolute paths pointing to the windows system folders, so they all worked just as they were supposed to, except that the commands to back up the registry files couldnt find the temporary directory to place them in(since it was on the floppy, not in the windows folder), so those failed! After the batch file had finished running, I had effectively deleted my windows registry files from existence, and replaced them with recovery backup files! Arghhhh... I ended up doing what you said and getting into the 'repair windows installaion', but I still had some funky things happening in windows. I ended up just reformatting and reinstalling windows. All of my data and programs were on a separate partition(praise the lord!), so basically all I had to restore were some driver files and personal settings. All in all, it was a big waste of time that never should have happened! That's the last time I'm setting any cpu-intensive process to realtime! Thanks for the help