XP won't boot, even in safe mode.

edited October 2009 in Science & Tech
Hi Guys

I had a virus on my computer I think it was called 'total security' or something like that. I searched the internet and found it was a real git to remove but did find that I could stop it's process form the task manager (it could be identified by some random numbers then .exe). So that's what I did for a few weeks.

Unfortunately now however when I turn my machine on it goes to the screen where you can choose which mode to boot in (safe mode etc) but whichever 1 I choose it won't boot up. If I choose 1 of the safe mode options it puts up a load of text about drivers then a blue screen flashes up and it restarts. if I boot in normal mode, the XP logo comes up, the bar scrolls across underneath and then the blue screen flashes and it restarts.

I don't have an xp recovery disc but I tried downloading ubuntu, burnt a disc and tried booting it with that but it won't boot from the CD even though I pressed f2 and went into the setup to set the cd-rom as the first option to boot from!?! I don't know how to and don't really want to have to format the computer as I have docs, photo''s and songs that I'd like to get off.

Sorry for the long post, I was just trying to give as much info as possible. I would really appreciate any help any body could give me...

Thanks in advance

Comments

  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited October 2009
    I would think your data is still on the hard drive. You need an adapter (like this one) to plug your hard drive into another computer, then you can pull it all off.

    If your hardware is healthy, you should be able to boot off a CD, whether its a Linux boot disk, or Windows install disk. You might try a manual system restore. You boot off an install disk, then do a system restore by copying a good registry to system32\config. Read about it here. I know it's long, but I've done this one a lot.
Sign In or Register to comment.