PC will not start up and goes in restart loop

[jodypress]

Hi all, need some advice/help here.

I have a Toshiba Portege R100 laptop. Did the windows XP update last night and when it restarts, it goes to the Windows XP logo with status bar for 30secs, then blue screen of death then goes back to

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

and Start Windows Normally

I have tried selecting all the above options and no joy. Just this continuous loop.

It's a genuine version of XP, but laptop doesn't have built in CD, I have no USB CD and no disc to hand as I am abroad until July.

I do have another laptop and portable hard drives. Any idea on how to boot it up and get it going?

Thanks

Jody

[Jinx]

To be honest without a windows CD it doesn't look good.

You say you have external hard drives? Can the bios of the laptop be set to boot from USB? If so you may be able to make one of the hard drives a system's disk and boot from that?

Edited by Jinx on Wednesday 30th May 09:59

[SneakyNeil]

Are any of the external drives laptop size ones, or are they all full size? If the former you might be able to put your laptop drive into one of them and use another computer to fix the problem.

9 times out of 10 you either need to just run a chkdsk on the drive, or that + copy the registry files back from a system restore folder to get back up and running again.

[jodypress]

Jinx said:

To be honest without a windows CD it doesn't look good.

You say you have external hard drives? Can the bios of the laptop be set to boot from USB? If so you may be able to make one of the hard drives a system's disk and boot from that?

Edited by Jinx on Wednesday 30th May 09:59

Hi Jinx,

Bizarrely I had this problem with another Toshiba R100 a few months ago, managed to get a usb CD drive and use a linux boot cd, and manged to fix problem without needing to format or reinstall XP.

I can set to boot from USB HD and this time don't have access to USB CD drive.

Will I need to reformat the HD as bootable to use as recovery disk?

[jodypress]

SneakyNeil said:

Are any of the external drives laptop size ones, or are they all full size? If the former you might be able to put your laptop drive into one of them and use another computer to fix the problem.

9 times out of 10 you either need to just run a chkdsk on the drive, or that + copy the registry files back from a system restore folder to get back up and running again.

Hi SneakyNeil,

I'm afraid the toshiba laptop drive has non-standard connectors, so not a simple drop it into ext. 2.5" case and explore and fix it. As I went through this all a few months ago. There is definitely an issue with Windows XP updates and Toshiba Protege R100's.

Thanks

Jody

[SneakyNeil]

jodypress said:

SneakyNeil said:

Are any of the external drives laptop size ones, or are they all full size? If the former you might be able to put your laptop drive into one of them and use another computer to fix the problem.

9 times out of 10 you either need to just run a chkdsk on the drive, or that + copy the registry files back from a system restore folder to get back up and running again.

Hi SneakyNeil,

I'm afraid the toshiba laptop drive has non-standard connectors, so not a simple drop it into ext. 2.5" case and explore and fix it. As I went through this all a few months ago. There is definitely an issue with Windows XP updates and Toshiba Protege R100's.

Thanks

Jody

Speaking genericly its usually the case that the drive its self is screwed into a shell type casing thing which adapts a standard drive to the manufacturer's custom connection, it's worth a close look to see if this might be the case here. That said, aren't R100's the mega thin ones? So you could be right..

[Jinx]

jodypress said:

Hi Jinx,

Bizarrely I had this problem with another Toshiba R100 a few months ago, managed to get a usb CD drive and use a linux boot cd, and manged to fix problem without needing to format or reinstall XP.

I can set to boot from USB HD and this time don't have access to USB CD drive.

Will I need to reformat the HD as bootable to use as recovery disk?

Yep - I haven't tried it myself but given that it can boot from a USB CD I would have high hopes. Other than that - picking up a USB stick and downloading something like ubuntu may be another way forward.