PC infinite reboot loop

June 1, 2004 8:29 AM

HELP, I'm stuck in meatspace. My home PC, on start-up,
1. Goes to the "Windows was not properly shut down" type screen...
2. ...where it gives me the choices of "Last Known Good Configuration" or "Start Windows Normally" etc, then...
3. ...no matter what choice I make, it eventually gives me a flash of blue screen with white print that is gone too quickly to read but starts with "STOP" and contains the word "registry."
4. Then it starts over at step 1 above. Repeat again and again.
5. Am I screwed? ...a little more inside.

I somehow once made it to a screen that asked me to put in a floppy "Boot disc." Is this what I need to do?

posted by Shane to technology (9 comments total)

What OS? XP Home Edition???
A full error message would be helpful. Something like: STOP 0x000000C2 .
A quick google search found this list of STOP codes.
posted by estey at 8:58 AM on June 1, 2004

Which version of Windows? 2000 or XP? OEM or full? Sounds like an issue I've had before, and following this information from Microsoft's KB was the remedy. Be warned that it's supposedly only for the full version of Windows XP. (That said, I think I used the same procedure with Win2K Professional.) Caveat haxor.
posted by Danelope at 8:59 AM on June 1, 2004

Thanks folks. Know what it feels like to have your home PC die? Castration. Like Case in Neuromancer ;-)

Sorry: Windows XP Pro.

estey, the error message appears for literally a split-second. But I'll try to catch the number, such as STOP 0x000000C2, when I get home tonight.
posted by Shane at 9:10 AM on June 1, 2004

You might also try doing the f8 thing at bootup to get your start up menu, then selecting step by step confirmation...that should tell you where it's blowing up...or at least give you a better idea.

Also, try booting into safe mode...a lot of times, it's something weird in your registry that can be avoided by booting into safe mode and if you've got restore points enabled, going back to a previous restore point.

More than likely, you installed something that is causing a conflict...or you uninstalled something that took a required system file with it.
posted by dejah420 at 9:15 AM on June 1, 2004

The boot screen is only useful if you have a windows boot disk or something to boot from disk...that said, If you computer came with a boot-up utils CD, try running those. I had the same problem with my HP laptop and figured out the HD crashed by booting up with the utils CD that came with the laptop and running the disk program.
posted by jmd82 at 9:43 AM on June 1, 2004

Yeah, what Dejah said, try to boot it in Safe Mode. If you can't even boot in safe mode, you're kinda screwed.
posted by falconred at 9:59 AM on June 1, 2004

Ehh, my Widnose is a kind of "Arrh, matey!" type deal like everything else on my PC, so I don't have a boot disc or the original CD.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I should get past my techno-idiocy. I guess if you depend heavily on your PC it's kind of the same as a motorcycle: if you're going to own one, you should understand it and be able to do basic maintenance and repairs. Otherwise you can end up screwed.
posted by Shane at 10:27 AM on June 1, 2004

I have seen this before, where it keeps restarting like this. In my experience it was caused by having SP1 installed with some other conflicting software, possibly Windows activation cracks.. do you have Service Pack 1 installed? When did this start?
posted by ac at 8:02 PM on June 1, 2004

do you have Service Pack 1 installed? When did this start?

I don't have SP1 installed unless it was one of those automatic downloads Microsoft is always pushing. This started Saturday.

I'm not sure what brought it on. I'm running XP with only 64 RAM, which is slow and problematic to begin with. I lose settings and such regularly. Saturday morning I think I downloaded a bunch of big graphic files, then later I shut down the computer just before it finished its shutdown routine, as I had a really important call and the phone is on top of the case and I couldn't hear well because of the fan noise. Stupid, I guess.

There are other considerations. A friend of mine put my beast together from components bought at a trade show, and he installed and formatted everything. At first the front On/Off button would only turn the computer on, not off. I had to turn the computer off at the back power button. Now, however, the front button that you would normally use to turn the computer on AND off does both. This scares me.

Argh. I'm gearing up to play with it this weekend.

Thanks for everyone's input. PLEASE HOPE ME! (I've always wanted to say that.)
posted by Shane at 8:55 AM on June 2, 2004