PCTech Forums

It seems to be a hardware issue.

See if you can boot into safe mode.

I would recomend trying to do a rollback to an earliery date (System Restore).

Turn the system off and put the old video card back in and then reboot.

Here is a link to the more technical aspects of what and why

It won't boot into Safe Mode, I get the same error message. I tried System Restore as noted in my original post as well as re-installing the original video card before I tried System Restore. I just tried to re-install XP Pro but it hangs at the setup string.. any other suggestionswould be greatly appreciated.

Does your cd of xp have service pack 2 already installed (slipstreamed) on it? Or did you have to install service pack two seperatly after you installed the OS.

If the cd has service pack 2 installed on it, put in the new video card. Insert the cd and boot from it and do a new install F8,[ I Agree]no formating to the same windows directory. It will search the hard drive and find the previous install. At that point you will be offered a repair option. Choose that and about 30 minutes later it should boot and ask you for your product key. Your anti virus might give you an error or two --nothing to worry about hopefully.

You could try expanding the Kernal32.dll file from your windows XP CD

Insert your Windows XP installation disk into your CD drive.
When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Now type 1 and press enter to select your OS ( if you just perss enter it will reboot)
When you are prompted, type the Administrator password, if the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

At the command prompt, type
expand d:\i386\ Kernal32.dl_ c:\windows\system32\
and then press ENTER.

The above assumes that your CD drive is d, if your CD drive is different change the letter d to the right letter.
(expand your-cd-drive:\i386\ Kernal32.dl_ c:\windows\system32\ )

Geckos solution might be the quickest route to go. The issue I worry about here is: Does Service Pack 2 rewrite the kernal32.dll?

The easiest way around that question is to spend $30 and buy another drive and install the os again and then hook up the problem child up as a slave and harvest the data you need.

Let me tell you folks about the godsend to all who call ourselves techies or reasonable facsimiles. I bought an HDD enclosure from CompUSA for $50 & saved all the data I needed to. You can buy smaller ones for less (100GB for about $35) but I was looking to the future. Mine supports up to 400GB HDD's and when I painlessly installed it, my otherwise un-bootable HDD was a hot swappable USB drive and I simply dragged the data needed to MY system & backed up to DVD. I even formatted the drive from this machine. Fast, no drivers needed for XP and reliable. I can't wait to pore over my old HDD's stored in the basement with this thing. I'd be happy to post a link, if anyone is interested. I swear, one day you WILL need this. Thanks for all your help. I always know where to turn 1st, pctechforums.com

BTW, I couldn't ever get to a boot screen, format screen, nothing...I was hosed and tried everything suggested here. Icecube's suggestion got me to thinking....hmmmm...& the enclosure which really just converts the problem to a USB drive worked like a dream, just as it will when then next HDD fails...as they all eventually do!

Why didn't I think of that??

Thats a real simple solution--neat and quick. Thanks for the tip