why cant my pc start up properly?

Question

sometimes, it says NTLDR is missing. or, it just reboots while displaying the Windows XP logo, ending in a never ending cycle of booting and rebooting. one time, the dreaded blue screen appeared during start up, saying that i had to turn off caching in the BIOS, whatever that meant. most of the time, to fix the problem, i had to format the drive and reinstall the OS. the pc can now start up properly, but it makes me choose which OS to use, even though the only one installed is Windows XP Pro. Is there a better way to fix this? Why is it like this? What should I do to prevent this from furthing happening? GBs of valuable data have been lost because of this. I need your help.
My OS is Windows XP Pro SP2
80GB HDD
512MB RAM
if that can help.

Answer 1

you might be missing a critical registry item. geet a registry fixing program. or worst case scenario your hard drive is dieing a slow painful death.

Answer 2

The blue screen is a diagnostic tool. It tells you how and where the problem occurs. Blue screns are the friends of geeks, but the enemy of people who put junk on their system. In this case your hadware is ok, but you put bad stuff on your computer and are paying the price. If we could have seen your bluescreens you could have figured out which application was the bad application and only reinstalled it instead of everything.



You did not do a good install, you wound up with a parallel install. This is a great way to try to recover data from the first partition. Then do the clean install. You made a minor mistake, but it worked out in your favor. I wish I had your luck.

Answer 3

The first thing I would do is put more memory in my computer. At 512MB of RAM, over half to two thirds of your memory is consumed in running your OS. Loading your OS usually takes more memory than running it once it is loaded. Your PC is probably using its swap files just to get through startup.

The second thing to remember is that manufacturers sometimes use a "hidden" partition to run certain programs. If you have a special button to run DVD movies or to play music, or a command that will reload Windows for you, giving you a clean install; most probably these are programs running under Linux in a special partition that "hides" from Windows by not conforming to Windows naming conventions. When you reformatted, you may have gotten rid of the partition and its information, but not the program in windows that "calls" this special partition's programs.

After you add more memory, load Windows in safe mode. If it installs correctly (none of your peripherals will run, but that is OK) the base platform of Windows is correct. By the way the reason your computer now looks like a "dual-boot" computer is probably that when you formatted you only formatted the Windows partition, and you reinstalled the OS in the previously "hidden partition" which now can find itself, but think/knows that there is another boot partition out there!

The more I think about this, the more possible ways I can think of that may be contributing to your problems. Right now you have probably four or five levels of mistakes piled on each other, and it is impossible to diagnose by mail. You will have to take it to a good repair shop and let them have at it. Assume that everything that is stored on your PC that you need will be corrupted, and anything you don't need will come through OK. Murphy's Law. Back it up!

In the future, Use system restore points and make copies of your registry every time you change or install any programs. MAKE ONLY ONE CHANGE AT A TIME! That way, if the system starts misbehaving, you know the culprit. Backup your own data regularly. If all your information is in My Documents, copy my documents to a CD-R. Purchased in bulk they run between one and two cents apiece. Just copy it all, at least once a week, and after any special project. For cheap (Max $10.00 a year) you're safe.

Another good idea, use Yahoo! mail for your general mailbox. Forward anything you need access to off line to your ISP mail address, or get CutePDF which is free or minimal cost (I've had it that long that I don't remember). It installs as another printer, but makes PDF's out of your documents when you print them. You can print important emails and save them in My Documents/Mail.

Get a good protection scheme going. You're going to need a firewall (not that thing Windows calls a firewall), anti-virus, ad blocker, and spyware blocker. You can buy a big-name suite that does it all from the same interface, or you can mix and match to do the same things with freeware.

In other words, once you get this fixed, do not let it happen again. Windows XP can be a reasonably stable platform, but the problem with computers is that they have no common sense. When told to do something stupid, they don't stop and say, "Hey Boss, explain that again, will you?" They're off and running making the same mistake over and over at 3 MHz until they are completely clogged. Your computer does not think, so you have to do it.

Sorry I couldn't help with the nuts and bolts of your question. If you know an experienced computer geek who will do it for free, but otherwise it is "to da shop, to da shop, to da shop, shop, shop". (first line of Lone Ranger theme)

Answer 4

check link below hope it helps you.