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Windows XP Laptop turns off whilst booting
James Stanley
Member #7,275
May 2006
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A friend has kindly brought over a Medion MID2030 laptop for me to fix.

The laptop is running Windows XP Home (I assume with SP2).

Upon pressing F2 to enter the system configuration utility, I am told that the BIOS is Insyde Software SCU, BIOS version M1.09, KBC version R1.05.

It has 512Mb of RAM and an 80GB Samsung MP0804H hard disk.

It has a 3.2Ghz P4.

It has a CD/RW and DVD/RW combo drive.

Now, when you turn it on, you see a big P4 logo and a line of text saying to Press F2 to enter the system configuration utility.

Than the screen goes blank and some writing about the CPU and RAM appears. It then goes blank again and the Windows boot loader appears, asking what you want to boot. You may choose from:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
gap
Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked)
gap
Start Windows Normally

Whatever you choose ends up at the same place.
The Safe Modes result in a screenful of text telling me the name of some DLL's in multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\System32\DRIVERS
If you choose normal windows there is a blue bar that scrolls across under the Windows logo.
Then there is a pause and for 1 frame (I think...) a BSOD pops up. It is way too fast to even read a word, so I videoed it with a fairly cheap camera (video attached), and I flicked through the frames on my PC and have been able to read this, after a while of squinting:

----

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage
to your computer.

unmountable_boot_volume

If this is the first time you've seen this blue error screen,
restart your computer. If this screen appears ...... follow
............

..... to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed,
if this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer
for the windows updates you might need.

if problems continue, ..... or remove any newly installed hardware

----

After this screen has disappeared it starts to boot all over again.

Does anybody know what I can do?

If I try to boot off a CD it says
The CD is not bootable [or words to that effect]
and asks me if I want to boot Floppy, HD or CD. Whichever I choose it still keeps saying CD is not bootable...
There is no floppy drive.

EDIT:
Sorry for the long post. But he is coming to get it tomorrow morning, and I don't really have time to answer many questions. Hopefully I covered everything...

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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Sounds like your laptop is fucked up.

By the way, a quick way to tell if you have SP2 or not is to look at the boot screen. If you have SP2, it won't specify Home or Professional edition, but if you have anything before SP2, it will say Home or Professional on the boot screen.

Steve Terry
Member #1,989
March 2002
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If you can get an external floppy disk drive and try to boot to a windows XP boot disk. You may be able to run fdisk /MBR to fix the issue since it could be that the MBR is messed up. However since you are bluescreening it's getting to Windows so the disk must be bootable. There is a way to have a bluescreen in windows not shut the PC off but since you can't get into windows to change this it's kinda stuck. Not sure why the CD is not bootable, is it an XP CD? Repair CD? Copied CD? My guess is the HD is pretty much a gonner.

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Samuel Henderson
Member #3,757
August 2003
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Too bad you cannot boot to a CD otherwise you would have been able to run fixboot and fixmbr from recovery console...

Other than that I got nothing :(

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James Stanley
Member #7,275
May 2006
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It is not SP2 then.
I don't have an external floppy drive, but I may get one.
I tried to boot a USB pen drive, but the BIOS froze.
Yeah, I tried about 6 different boot CDs but to no avail.
Oh, well. I'll tell him to go to PC world. :p

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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The MBR isn't messed up if it starts booting XP, it's something corrupt in XP referring to a different HDD as the root drive. You likely need a repair install or a reinstall.

Also, there MAY be an option on that boot menu to disable automatic reboot on blue screens, I think I've seen it before, but I'm not sure on that.

James Stanley
Member #7,275
May 2006
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I think it is more sinister than that...
It won't boot anything. CDs, USB drives.
I took the HD out and put it in my laptop. From there I installed DSL. It booted fine on my laptop, but on this one it said 'Invalid boot sector. Press H to try again or any other key to boot from floppy'. I am going to tell him that it is broken and he should seek professional help.

Tobias Dammers
Member #2,604
August 2002
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I say your hdd and / or BIOS controller has gone ka-zingggg, my friend. Or something else in da BIOS. If you can't boot from anything, then it's not the software.
I had something similar once; the computer in question would do less with each boot. First, windows gave me an error and refused to boot. So I switched off and on, then the BIOS said that it couldn't find a boot sector. I switched off and on again, and the screen just remained black. Completely. Turns out one of the capacitors near the power supply connector on the mainboard had melted down; I guess those are meant to buffer away the peak that comes from switching on the PSU - each time I pushed the button, I made things worse. In the end, I had taken down the mobo, memory, cpu, graphics card and one of the hdds. The other hdd, a 200 MB (yes MB) Conner, survived without a single byte lost. I still have it, even though there is nothing one could possibly do with it nowadays. It's not even large enough to hold a decent linux...

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Me make music: Triofobie
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"We need Tobias and his awesome trombone, too." - Johan Halmén

James Stanley
Member #7,275
May 2006
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I had a computer like that once, too.
I put 14 new capacitors on and it worked like new :). In fact, it is on the other side of my KVM switch right now.
Btw, that hard drive could hold DSL. I would call that a decent Linux :). I use it on my laptop because I only have 150MHz and 32MB of RAM.

Tobias Dammers
Member #2,604
August 2002
avatar

Wow, that's even less than that ancient machine had. It had a 200 MHz AMD CPU, 48 MB of RAM, and the infamous 200 MB Conner HDD. That same HDD survived a 15 km bicycle trip in a nylon backpack, otherwise unprotected, again without a single byte of data lost.

---
Me make music: Triofobie
---
"We need Tobias and his awesome trombone, too." - Johan Halmén

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