I have an old PC that runs my CNC router. pretty old as it has/needs a parallel port. It lives in the shed year round so not loved. I’ve not used it for a while (months) but switched it on this morning and it booted fine and all was good and shut it down.

I’ve just been out there again to put some files on it. Needed to free up a USB port on the front so I plugged the keyboard into a different port and switched on. This time it came up with a boot up menu saying it couldn’t start windows. I selected start windows normally and it froze during boot up and returned to the same menu, tried go to last working configuration or something like that and it did the same. Selected safe mode and it booted straight up and worked fine. In safe mode I ran chkdsk which didn’t obviously flash up any errors although the final screen disappeared before I could read it all. Still doing the same thing.

What else can I try? Its not networked and not running any anti virus. I only drag and drop files from a USB stick. There’s nothing important on there although I’d rather not have to reinstall windows and set the CNC machine up again.

You did run chkdsk with the /f option, yes?

Safe mode again, sfc /scannow for starters.

BIOS battery or chipset. This is not an OS problem.

I seriously doubt that.

EDIT: CMOS battery, that is, you ninja editor you. Could be a motherboard failure I suppose but I’d rank that after OS corruption, hard disk failure and RAM faults, in about that order.

Thinking about it, one thing that might have happened if the CMOS battery had died is the ATA mode reset to default (disabling AHCI). But that’s a long shot on an ageing XP machine. Easily tested for anyway; check date / time to see if you’ve gone back a decade or two.

I’d go with what Cougar said first. I had this with a couple machines back when xp was current, ergo my memory is hazy.

In fact, now I’ve had time to dwell a bit, I seem to recall one of them was bad sectors forming in the FAT.

If it is disk related, fdisk will solve it one way or the other…

I’ve got a XP base unit here if you want it. Leicester area, will be North/mid Wales on Saturday.

You did run chkdsk with the /f option, yes?

Yes

Safe mode again, sfc /scannow for starters.

I get WINDOWS FILE PROTECTION COULD NOT INITIATE A SCAN OF PROTECTED SYSTEM FILES.”

“THE SPECIFIC ERROR CODE IS 0X000006BA [ THE RPC SERVER IS UNAVAILABLE.].
I’ve checked that RPC is started in services.msc and checked SFCDisable is set to 0 in regedit

edit: date and time is fine (10 mins out)
edit2: thanks alan but that’s a bit far. Not quite that desperate… yet

Smeg.

I don’t suppose you’ve got another XP machine kicking about somewhere have you?

If it is disk related, fdisk will solve it one way or the other…

It certainly will, permanently. (-:

I don’t suppose you’ve got another XP machine kicking about somewhere have you?

I think I have a netbook but it has no CD or Floppy

Hmm, at this point I used to make the drive a slave and boot to a DOS prompt from a floppy and run some tools at the lowest level.

I assume that something that you can still do if you have a startup disc for it still? You should be able to fdisc it from the winxp install disc too.

Another thought. You said,

I’ve just been out there again to put some files on it.

and

not networked and not running any anti virus

Presumably you’re transferring files around on a USB pendrive? Reckon it’d be worth a virus and malware scan on that drive and its donor PC before we go too far down the rabbit hole.

that’s a bit far.

Where are you, out of interest?

Hmm, at this point I used to make the drive a slave and boot to a DOs prompt from a floppy and run some tools at the lowest level.

I assume that something that you can still do if you have a startup disc for it still? You should be able to fdisc it from the winxp install disc too.

With respect, I appreciate you’re trying to help, but talking about fdisk and DOS boot floppies hasn’t been appropriate for at least fifteen years now.

Fdisk (in the Windows world at least) will allow you to delete the entire disk partition and recreate it. Great if we want to completely blow everything away and start again rather than attempting a repair.

We’re talking about Windows XP you know…

I’ve made the not unreasonable assumption that his hardware is XP era too.

I think you’re confusing XP with Windows 95.