Ian Grant <carnarvon@nonags.com> wrote:
Try starting the machine in Safe Mode. To do this turn on the
computer and start tapping the F8 key as soon as the first information
of any kind shows on the screen. Keep tapping until the Windows
Startup Menu appears and choose Safe Mode from the menu.
In Safe Mode open Control Panel - System - Advanced and click on the
Settings button in the Startup and Recovery (bottom) section. In the
Startup and Recovery window click on the checkbox for "automatically
restart" to clear it and also change the memory dump settings to
"small memory dump 64k". Click on Apply and OK as needed to exit.
That should stop the reboot loop, but it may be replaced by a Blue
Screen Of Death STOP error. If so then the contents of the STOP error
message, including all of the parameters, will be a direct clue as to
the underlying cause of the problem. Post that information back here
if you need further assistance.
From this point there are several possible courses of action:
1. Depending on the exact details of the STOP message information it
may be possible to repair the system as is, although this may involve
downloading a 5 diskette boot set from Microsoft and using them to
boot the computer into the Recovery Console.
2. Another option would be to boot back into Safe Mode and use System
Restore to set the machine back to a date and time that is prior to
the onset of this problem. This will not work if the problem is
caused by a hardware defect or by a damaged data structure on the hard
drive (e.g. STOP error says Unmountable_Boot_Volume).
3. IBM must have supplied some means of restoring the system back to
"as it left the factory" condition. While this is a drastic option,
as it wipes out everything that has been done since the machine was
purchased including all user data files, installed programs, etc, it
is better than having an unusable machine. On many IBM Laptops this
"system recovery" information is located in a hidden partition on the
hard drive which you can access by pressing the F11 key during the
very first few seconds after the machine is turned on.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
