Looping at post?

[Courtiot]

Please can you help?
I am trying to help a friend who is having trouble booting up, it seems to just go into a loop.
This is what she says:
i start it up, goes onto bios info-page, then it goes on to the next page, like a grey information box, then goes back to bios and in a loop.
I asked her to try to boot from CD rom but it says cannot do this in DOS. She is running XP. I think she has deleted a system file somewhere. I am not a tech person and don't know what to try. Can you help please?

[FastGame]

Are you able to work on her PC or trying this over the phone ?

What PC does she have ?

First tell her to make sure that mouse & keyboard are plugged in and working correctly. The PC should boot from the XP CD if she has first boot device set to CD-Rom. If the PC is looping in the bios before it gets to the OS then most likely its the mouse/keyboard/ram or video card. If the PC doesn't detect the hard drive it doesn't loop but gets stuck at a screen that says "Boot Failure" and it wont restart unless you hit the switch.

Let us know more on whether this looping is only in the bios or if it passes the bios and starts looping when the OS loads.

[Coffee]

Video card would probably cause an error before the bios info, then ram, and you can boot into windows without a keyboard & mouse. Sounds more like a MBR problem with the hard drive, although that would show an error telling you it was.

The first screen is the bios info, CPU, RAM & Hard Disks that are installed, the second screen with the gray box is usually I/O configuration. Can you get to the boot menu pressing F8 after the second bios screen?

[Courtiot]

Hi
First of all I would like to thank you very much for helping me/my friend
I am in contact through messenger and phone as she lives about 700 miles from me. She is more concerned about her hardrive as she has about 300 photo's of her baby on there (not backed up) She is coming here in about 2 weeks but is flying here, so I told her to bring her hardrive with her and I will try to get the photo's off her hardrive through my computer.
The computer is quite old, intel celeron 533mhz, 128mb mem, not a clue as to what m/board she has onboard sound and vid, has 2 small hardrives - 9gb & 3.5gb I think her computer was one of those cheap ones on sale about 4-5 years ago

She can get to the dos prompt but when she tries to go into safe mode it just goes into the loop and does this on all the options. I have now pointed her to M/soft web page to download the start up disks (6) her friend has lent her a laptop to do this. I do not know if this will help but worth a try.
She has tried boot disks but they do not work. She is getting this error message now: INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 7. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.
It says theres a corrupt file, does this help at all??
Thanks

[Coffee]

Well that definitely sounds like an OS related problem. Her files should still hopefully be in tact, but it depends on what happened before to cause the error.

In your original post it mentions that you tried booting from the CD. Did you run setup from DOS or actually configure the BIOS to boot from CD?

The startup disk should really have been made when installing XP. This post has some info on booting to the XP CD for setup/repair...

https://www.techzonez.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8666

[Courtiot]

In your original post it mentions that you tried booting from the CD. Did you run setup from DOS or actually configure the BIOS to boot from CD?

****

Yes, it is configured to boot from CD but it won't run. Just this loop.

[Courtiot]

Could it be that the motherboard does not support the cd booting or the cd itself? The files on M/soft web page for booting from 6 floppy disks don't work either. I think maybe this one is impossible to solve. But thank you all so very much!!!!

[Conan]

Could it be that the motherboard does not support the cd booting or the cd itself? The files on M/soft web page for booting from 6 floppy disks don't work either. I think maybe this one is impossible to solve. But thank you all so very much!!!!

I tried installing XP on a friend's Compaq notebook in the past but no success either in booting from CD. The only thing that worked was his recovery CD to install Windows Me.

[cash_site]

I tried installing XP on a friend's Compaq notebook in the past but no success either in booting from CD. The only thing that worked was his recovery CD to install Windows Me.

Good point Conan, he did say that she bought those cheap comps on sale, might be an old Dell/Compaq/Gateway etc computer. Does she have any recovery cd from when she bought it?

Also, becareful in her flying the HD's over, dont put it in baggage, as the carriers make throw it around

I had a similar problem, with XP continually rebooting in same loop. Happened after I totally wrecked the OS files. BB was able to walk me thru doing a quick repair installation, just enough to get back into XP and BACK UP everthing!! Then time for reformat.

Hope she gets it fixed. Where is 700miles away from you, back in UK ??

[Courtiot]

Hello!!!
You are all so patient!!! Thank you!!
I have tried very hard to try to find out what she actually did that caused all this but all she says is that when she switched it on the next day it would not work!! But then later on she said; below........................
I actually sent her instructions for the booting of cd that you kindly sent and she has now got a bit further. The cd is booting now and she is getting a setup screen (not windows xp screen though) just a blue setup screen that says; setup is now starting - then it just stops at thet screen, it does not go any further.

The 700 miles bit that I wrote in??? I am sorry but that is km, not miles like I said, we have not been in France very long and it takes a bit of getting used to!!! She lives in Paris and we live in the South West of France near Biarritz!!! It is still a long way lol
The computer was/is a yakamo i think. Told you it was a cheap type lol

I asked her how she came about to delete the file INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 7. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit. She said;

I had never seeen it b4... thought it shouldnt be there so i deleted it

I always have hidden files and folders showing, and that was never there b4
I told her to change the hidden files and folders to hide, bit late now but...... You are all getting closer as at least now she is booting from cd even though it does not go very far!!!

[Coffee]

Sorry I over looked this before but the 'txtsetup.sif', should only be found on the XP CD. Did you say she was getting that error when normally booting to XP?

Also it a very important file, which holds pre install information for the setup files needed to install XP. Which could explain why the setup process just hangs.

You may be wanting to try a different XP CD if you can get hold of one.

[Courtiot]

Thank you all very, very much, there is hope now at the end of the tunnel!!! LOL
I think I will wait now and see if my CD will work to get her back on, just to be able to save all her photo's, then she can format and I will take her "view all files" away!!!!!
Thank you COFFEE for the info on that dreaded file!! I may be back!!! lol OH NO!!!..................do I hear???? PS I am not a bloke, I am female
Thanks

[Coffee]

Hope it works out.

[cash_site]

Err, just a quick question, how are you going to test her HD if she only brings the HD?? You will need to be careful when installing the HD or XP etc, due to windows activation requirements. (sorry just thought of it now) Also, varying MB chipsets will affect if the computer starts or not too... sorry I think this will get a little harder before being dead easy.

Um... I guess you could install her HD as a second in your comp, then first scan for virus etc. Also, try to backup as much as possible of her data on to your comp or burner etc. Especially her PHOTOs Then once she is happy everything is safe, shutdown, remove your HD and install her's as the master (rev, do we still use this term?) and try to boot.

If fail, try to boot from XP cd, if fail then you will need to do full reformat and clean. You can either put your HD back in as master and her's as slave, then reformat her drive within windows, easy

This will blank her Drive, so when she returns to Paris, she can do a clean XP install

Let us know how it goes, all the best. Also, we have a few female members at TZ, the more the merrier

[Courtiot]

Hi
Thank you, I am going to try all of these things you have all told me to do and hopefully I will get the photo's, that is mainly what she is bothered about really, she does have some music files too so we will have to wait and see what we can save. I hope this will teach her not to delete files willy nilly!!! I will let you all know what happens as soon as I can, she will be here in about 1-2 weeks hopefully and thanks you lot again, you are all treasures!!!