Can't recover from Windows XP Crash

[FPM]

I have an IBM machine running Windows XP Pro sp3. Recently, a message appeared that a certain fle, KB2559049-IE8 (a Microsoft update from 2011) had become corrupt and/or unreadable. Apparently, I did not address this problem quickly enough, mostly because of my ignorance about this problem. A few days ago, while the machine was idle, the dreaded blue screen appeared, the machine shut down, and attempted to restart. When it got to the Windows loading screen, after about 4 runs of the progress bar (usually runs about 20 passes before finishing), the same blue screen re-appeared, and it went through the same cycle again. This just kept repeating, so I manually shut the machine down.

 

After some research, I started it up again. Before the Windows loading screen appeared, I pressed F8 to bring up the menu containing the various restart options (Safe, Safe with command prompt, etc). Regardless of which mode I tried, the machine appeared to load a bunch of drivers, after which the blue screen re-appeared, and the cycle repeated. The blue screen only remained for a very short period, so I couldn't copy its contents. However, I did take a digital picture of the screen - it's readable - if anyone needs to know exactly what's in it.

 

Bottom line: I could use a suggestion (or 2 or 10!) on possibilities for addressing this problem. I can probably recover data files using some third-party software, but I really want this machine to be working again (if possible).

 

Thanks for any help you may supply.

 

Frank

[hazelnut]

Did you try 'last known good' as one of the F8 options?

 

Do you (or a friend) have an XP install disc?

 

Are you able to take out the drive and put it in another machine?

[razz]

It's been many many years since I had a blue screen (back in the days when I was running Windows ME) and equally as long since I had to boot via the F8 process. In other words, I forgot if you can access a previous restore point. If you can, then restoring your PC to a previous good restore point may do the trick for you.

 

Hope this works FPM. Good luck!

 

edit: LOL Just noticed Hazel advised the same thing. Good thinking Hazel

[hazelnut]

Actually Razz I believe 'last known good' is different from a restore point in that what it does it loads the drivers and registry data that worked last time you had a successful boot

[FPM]

Thank you for your discussion/suggestions. I'll let you know how I fare after I figure out how to restore a files backup from the crashed machine to another machine.