Last night my wife’s computer started acting strange. When we turned it on it went to the screen with choices of Safe Mode, Regular Windows Startup, etc., then no matter which mode we chose would immediately reboot again.
We dug out the XP installation CD and booted from that and re-installed the OS. It installed and her system came back up again with everything intact. BUT… if we take the Windows CD out of the drive and try to reboot, it goes back to the behavior in the first paragraph. As long as the CD is in the drive it boots up fine, and once it’s booted there’s no problem. No CD, no boot.
Has anyone seen this behavior before, or have any idea how to fix it?
Never seen this behavior precisely except on old DOS / Win 3.1 installs where the hard disk wasn’t made bootable or the boot files were damaged/missing the PC required a floppy to boot the system to windows. It sounds like the hard disk boot files may be missing or damaged and it’s having to get them from the CD. If there are no other recommendations in this thread re easy fixes (and I’m not enough of an XP maven to think of one for your scenario) save your data ASAP and format/re-install.
I’m not sure if this will work in XP or not, i know it does in Win2000. Boot to the cd and go into the option for recovery console. Then at the prompt you should something like “fixmbr”. I don’t have a cd nearby to check though. You can always do /? at the prompt to find out the real command.