One of the blades on my psu fan broke recently and when it happened Windows wouldn't boot; Linux would, albeit very slowly. Now that I've replaced the fan Windows still won't boot and asks for safe mode, etc. After that it only gets to its logo and then blue screens and starts over. The blue screen is too quick to read before it restarts.

I'm writing this, of course, using Linux (which works fine) but I do need the use of Windows. I believe the users of this forum are more informed so I'm trying here. Is there some file I may need to check in Windows that might possibly be the culprit?

Any help would be great!

Well, a key point would be to examine what the blue screen tells you. What error does it contain?

The blue screen really just blinks on and then off too quickly to read and then reboots.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

I think the first thing I would try is to run the recovery mode on your windows xp install CD. Past that you can download a harddrive confidence test from your HD manufacturer to see if there are any bad spots. Also, for fun you can download a memory tester just to be on the safe side. Here's one: http://www.memtest.org/

your best bet may be to backup everything off of the windows drive (either by mounting it from linux or by loading it on another windows install) and then reinstall..

if its xp and you have a bootable cd and have made a recovery floppy then you could goto the recovery console by booting from the cd.

Oh yeah and have you tried booting with a "last known good configuration" Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't......

yeh.. thats pretty well consistant with the rest of windows

Just replace the psu. Its the root of all evil.

Thanks for the replies. For some reason I didn't even think about using recovery. I'll try that and post some hopefully positive results.

This was the fan on the Power Supply Unit?

When power supplies go bad, you usually see symptoms close to what you're describing. If the blade broke off and scraped shielding off a wire, or broke a turn around part of a transformer, your PSU may be unstable. That affects the normalcy of power the rest of your system is getting, and you'll see blue screens, etc.

Swap out that PSU and see if you get better results. Of course now after a few bad boots, Windows partition may be corrupt -- but it's worth a shot.

-- Shade

Well, I finally got Win to repair the installation. It wouldn't give me the option at first and wanted me to format because of errors. I escaped and tried to startup Linux to do a backup, but Windows had conveniently deleted the MBR! Back in the Windows setup, it now offered the repair option so, now, all is well except I need a lilo screen.

I guess the 1st Mandriva CD will offer to reinstall lilo?

just login as root and run lilo, no args.. just lilo from the cmd line and that will redo the mbr..

I threw on the Linux rescue disk and had it re-install lilo, but it didn't work. Then I did the following:

cd /mnt
chroot /mnt
bash -l
mount -a

lilo

And then it worked and I rebooted.

Thank ya'll for your help.