Win7 PC boot issue

[loanrangie]

I have an old HP work station that runs twin Xeon CPU's that i have used as spare PC for my console modding and storage that will no longer boot up, i was having driver issues for USB peripherals and at some stage during deleting and attempting to install new drivers it failed.
I've tried using the win7 installation disc to do a repair but it just gets caught in a boot loop, i would rather try and fix it than just wipe the hdd but nothing i've tried has worked so far.
Any PC gurus got any ideas on this ?

[incisor]

will it boot from something like hirens boot disc or a live linux boot disc so you can retrieve your data and start from scratch or do a file system repair ?

[loanrangie]

will it boot from something like hirens boot disc or a live linux boot disc so you can retrieve your data and start from scratch or do a file system repair ?

I havent tried a linux distro yet and actually was just looking at them on youtube last night, i want to try to get it to boot before wiping it if i can.
Files are on a 2nd hdd which i can remove any time but there are programs on the boot drive i'd like to keep.
Which distro would you recommend, i have some old Ubuntu and Kubuntu live discs floating around but they are at least 10yo.

[incisor]

zorinOS if your coming from windows...

no need to wipe it is a live disc you can play with before installing

[Tins]

Beauty of Zorin is that you can run it from a USB. Not sure because I use iOS, but it’s possible that you may be able to download it to your phone and run it from there, or at least copy it to a thumb drive. You can configure it to resemble your current OS. Supports PCs going back to about 2010.

[BradC]

I have an old HP work station that runs twin Xeon CPU's that i have used as spare PC for my console modding and storage that will no longer boot up, i was having driver issues for USB peripherals and at some stage during deleting and attempting to install new drivers it failed.
I've tried using the win7 installation disc to do a repair but it just gets caught in a boot loop, i would rather try and fix it than just wipe the hdd but nothing i've tried has worked so far.
Any PC gurus got any ideas on this ?

Have you managed to boot it in verbose safe mode? It'll list everything on the screen progressively as it boots. You can video that so you can identify which driver / file it loads before it reboots. Then you can boot something like a rescue-cd and delete that file. That'll break other stuff probably, but it will usually stop the boot loop.

Personally I detest windows because it does dumb **** like this, and I've spent years fixing other peoples machines when it does. I haven't used it on the bare metal since 1997 for precisely this reason.

Have a poke around the net and see if you can figure out how to make it verbose and then go from there.

[loanrangie]

Have you managed to boot it in verbose safe mode? It'll list everything on the screen progressively as it boots. You can video that so you can identify which driver / file it loads before it reboots. Then you can boot something like a rescue-cd and delete that file. That'll break other stuff probably, but it will usually stop the boot loop.

Personally I detest windows because it does dumb **** like this, and I've spent years fixing other peoples machines when it does. I haven't used it on the bare metal since 1997 for precisely this reason.

Have a poke around the net and see if you can figure out how to make it verbose and then go from there.

Its an old PC but if i can keep it running i will , at least until i work out whats on it and replicate it.
I tried normal safe mode and that didnt work, it has a long bot process which makes it hard to make changes in the boot sequence.

[BradC]

If you boot into safe mode with boot logging you should then be able to boot with a rescue-cd to examine the boot log. It should be called ntbtlog.txt and located in the Windows folder.

Alternatively, after doing the boot log can you boot into safe mode with command line? That should pretty much only load storage and keyboard drivers. You could then have a look at the boot log.

I use systemrescuecd more often than not, but I believe windows install media has a rescue shell, or there are other windows based rescue cds available.

[loanrangie]

Tried Zorinos but its 64 bit and too new for this ancient PC, Ubuntu 12.04 boots as a live CD but couldnt use any recovery tools from there.
Can boot up with Hirens CD but wasnt sure which of the tools to use and i ran out of time so thats a job for this weekend.