Dell PC in a boot up loop

[aramis7350]

Hi All,

Does anyone know what would cause a Dell PC to be caught in a boot up loop?

It tries to open up Windows XP but fails and then tries again and again and again ......

Am I facing a hardware problem here or a software problem?

Thanks

[CAMINO KID]

I had a simular problem sometime back and found a file had become corrupt. If you can watch the boot cycle closely you will see a dll file is not being found error message. I was able to google it from another machine and downloaded the file to a flash drive and reloaded it from the safe mode and got my system back up. It is things like this you do not always write down how you fixed them but you remember some of it. Sorry, I am not much more of a help but hope you can find your problem.

[tribe_fan]

If you can get into the system using safe mode - Right Click on My Computer, Select Properties, Then Advanced, then Startup and Recovery.

Deselect Automatically Reboot.

[the_tow_guy]

In bios settings you can sometimes fix that by turning off the "stop on all errors" option. Can't remember what subsection that's in and I don't think all bios' have it. My main computer doesn't, but the spare I have that sits on my bench in the garage does and I had to fix it by that method a while back.

[naiku]

While it is booting keep hitting F8, eventually it will bring you to the a menu allowing you to boot into Safe Mode. Hopefully that will at least get you into XP, from there go into Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer.

In the Event Viewer, click on each of the categories and look for any errors that will be at the same time as you were trying to boot. Either search Google for the errors, or paste them here.

Do you see a flash of blue when it tries to get into XP? To get it to stop continually rebooting (if you can get into Safe Mode) right click on the My Computer icon, click on Properties, click on the Advanced tab, click on the Settings button under the Startup and Recovery section, deselect "Automatically restart". Once you have done that restart, if you get the blue screen now it will freeze on that screen, make a note of what is displayed and, again either paste here or search Google.