Hello People!! I'm back with another question here. Here's the situation: My neighbor has a custom built comp that has Windows XP Professional for her OS. When she boots up that bios screen comes up and then the "safe mode" page comes up. Well, she can't even get to the desktop screen from safe mode at all. Weird. So I put in the XP Pro disk and nothing happens from their either... I checked the temp in CPU and its running at 93 deg.. so I don't think its overheating? Thoughts on this issue and TIA!
-Mike

 

Okay, I'll give this one a shot based on how I'd approach it...

1.) The temperature of the CPU is about normal.....the average PC runs at about 35-45C, which translates to about 95-105 degrees Fahrenheit. I've seen some PC's running as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit normally. It just depends on the type of computer and amount of cooling it has. I wouldnt worry so much about it, but if it's running hotter then 130, I would be.

2.) If you are seeing the safe mode screen, usually 1 of 3 things has happened. There are a few more reasons, but these are the most common.

a.) The computer crashed and upon rebooting, encountered a problem trying to start Windows
b.) The installation of a hardware driver, software update, or program has failed and caused a problem booting.
c.) The computer lost power and is booting up with the Safe Mode option by default.

3.) What you want to try first is to boot the machine up and get to Safe Mode. To do this:

If the computer is running, shut down Windows, and then turn off the power
Wait 30 seconds, and then turn the computer on.
Start tapping the F8 key. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears.
If you begin tapping the F8 key too soon, some computers display a "keyboard error" message. To resolve this, restart the computer and try again.
Ensure that the Safe mode option is selected.
Press Enter.
The computer then begins to start in Safe mode.

Now, you might do this and you will get thru part of the steps....and then the computer will start to list a bunch of files in white text on a black screen and it may hang or lockup while doing this. This usually means that something has corrupted or something is messing up during the load.

What you can try to do is a Windows repair. You would boot the computer up and press F12 (during what is usually the boot up screen of a logo or name of the company/motherboard) This will give you a menu that will let you choose the boot options. You will want to choose the boot from CD or CD-rom option. It's usually the last one listed.

This will then boot you into the Windows XP installation CD. You'll be given a few prompts and then be offered the option to install Windows XP or Repair Windows XP. Choose the repair option. You'll get a few more prompts and just make sure to read everything and follow the instructions. This may potentially fix the issue, but I wont promise anything.

I would try this and see if it does the trick. We can try a few other options, but this is the easiest and quickest to try.

 

Just a disclaimer about the repair install if you resort to that, I've done it 4 times in the past on various computers. Twice it fixed everything fine, twice it seemed to fix everything but windows ran very screwy afterwards (after a bit of fiddling with it I ended up wiping the drive and reinstalling both times as I couldn't get it running right). Hopefully you won't need to use repair anyways.

 

Thanks fellas! Right now I'm on my... oh whatever beer so I'll pass this along to my neighbor. BTW... I haven't told you this yet but she is a true victom of Hurricane Katrina and she really appreciates all of ya'll's help. Thanks.
-Mike