Intermittent Boot Problem (Old Machine)
Discussion
Sort of a last resort post this (before it goes in the bin)
Friend phoned me up with fault on his PC. Not booting at all, coming up with *cannot find WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM*
OK says I, I'll have a quick look, but don't hold any hopes out.
After a quick google I interpreted the above to mean *The registry's goosed*, so I replaced the contents of the folder in question with the WINDOWS\REPAIR folder (overwriting the corrupt files after backing them up) This was done by using the drive as a slave in another machine.
Booted the machine after putting the drive back and OK. It booted, found most peripherals and away we go.
Since then however (yesterday) It's taking between 4 - 6 attempts to get it booting to the OS (Win XP Home) First time it usually gets as far as the makers splash screen (Tiny...said it was old
) after that we can get to the PCI list, then sometimes up to the Windows start screen. When it does manage to sort Windows out, usually the mouse & keyboard won't be recognised, so another boot usually brings them into play.
When it's running (up now) it seems OK, though if the screen saver kicks in (presently disabled) it *may* freeze again.
Am I missing something obvious here, or has it had it's day?
It's a Tiny something or other. MSI 6534 (socket 478) board Intel don't know what, but not massive, 256 (yep) SDRAM (can't even test it, none of this left any more)
I have no restore disks for this machine (apparently they're long gone) and don't have a copy of XP Home either (only Pro) It does have a partition on the hard drive which I'm assuming is a back-up, though I have no way of accessing this.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Friend phoned me up with fault on his PC. Not booting at all, coming up with *cannot find WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM*
OK says I, I'll have a quick look, but don't hold any hopes out.
After a quick google I interpreted the above to mean *The registry's goosed*, so I replaced the contents of the folder in question with the WINDOWS\REPAIR folder (overwriting the corrupt files after backing them up) This was done by using the drive as a slave in another machine.
Booted the machine after putting the drive back and OK. It booted, found most peripherals and away we go.
Since then however (yesterday) It's taking between 4 - 6 attempts to get it booting to the OS (Win XP Home) First time it usually gets as far as the makers splash screen (Tiny...said it was old
) after that we can get to the PCI list, then sometimes up to the Windows start screen. When it does manage to sort Windows out, usually the mouse & keyboard won't be recognised, so another boot usually brings them into play.When it's running (up now) it seems OK, though if the screen saver kicks in (presently disabled) it *may* freeze again.
Am I missing something obvious here, or has it had it's day?
It's a Tiny something or other. MSI 6534 (socket 478) board Intel don't know what, but not massive, 256 (yep) SDRAM (can't even test it, none of this left any more)
I have no restore disks for this machine (apparently they're long gone) and don't have a copy of XP Home either (only Pro) It does have a partition on the hard drive which I'm assuming is a back-up, though I have no way of accessing this.
Any help greatly appreciated.
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