Hung on black screen: XP Startup

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I have had look at a friends PC and I need to get some help to repair his PC.

When loading up it has the start up Win XP screen with the green bar. After this you can usually see the login screen it proceeds to a black screen showing only the white mouse pointer. I have tried to access it using F8, and using Safe Mode. The only difference is it shows the wording 'Safe Mode' in all four corners.
At this point it just hangs on the black screen.

I had installed Avast Anti-Visus Home Edition for him a few months ago and it flagged up a virus recenly. He cannot remember the details
He has important stuff on there which he would like to back up.
How can I resolve the situation without deleting or overwiting these file?


His computer according to the inofrmation I picked up is running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3
Thanks in Advance,
Enigma

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

hi

have you tried last known good configuration?

 

Boot to the recovery console and do a CHKDSK /R

Works quite often and is the quickest option.

However, if it does work it is an indicator that the hard drive is on the way out.

If not then a *repair* as Sparky says.

If that doesn't work a parallel installation (install Windows to a different folder, without formating the disk)

 

I work on the basis that if there is information/docs to save that needs to be priority. I would remove the HD and attach as a slave in another PC. Backup the important docs and try a recovery after that. You could run a scandisk and AV on the drive while it is in the second PC. I have had the same problem on an XP Home system. In the end it was a failing HD and I was able to save the data before I lost the drive.

Is it SATA or IDE?