BSOD plus safe mode prob;ems, help needed.

Hi all.

i have a XP Media Center Edition
3GB RAM (2x1GB 2x512MB dont know if this makes a difference)
amd dual core (cannot remember speed)

basically, the problem occured ever since the electricity supply ran out (ie no credit in meter) i loaded up the computer and it loads up to when the avira antivirus splash screen comes on and after that i get the BSOD

now i have spent 3 days researching this and i have no clue, as most sites say go into windows and see the event log and many other things associated with getting into windows.

now i move onto the next problem, i cannot access safe mode, whenever i try to all i get is a box on my monitor saying "video mode not supported, i have tried this on 2 monitors both saying the same thing, so i now cannot access windows at all, i would like to avoid having to re-install windows.

i have read that it could be RAM, so i have tried one stick in each 4 slots for each of the 4 sticks (ie one at a time in each slot)

i also tried using onboard video, removing the video card but to no avail

please help, as i dont know what else to try.

thank you for your time,
Gavin.

This sounds like a corrupted driver or file, caused by the power drop. The first thing I would do is run chkdsk /r from the Recovery Console. If you don't have an XP CD, download and create a bootable CD from the .iso file

XP Recovery Console

You don't burn the iso file itself to CD., you create a CD from the iso file using your CD burning software. There is a good freeware burner called DeepBurnerwhich will do this. Another called ISO Recorder is also very easy to use.

Boot the CD and at the first opportunity, enter R to start the Recovery Console.
Next, choose which XP installation you want to login to. Normally this will be 1.
Lastly you will be asked for the Administrator password. Just press the Enter key as the Administrator does not have a password (unless you gave it one, then you would enter it).

From the command prompt, enter: chkdsk c: /r

Allow it to complete undisturbed.

Another thing to try would be to select Enable VGA Mode from the Windows Advanced Options menu *F8 at boot time), see if that helps.

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Rich

It's a damn small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. - Andrew Jackson

Thank you Ztruker for the reply.

i have continued to play about with the computer and i can now get into windows (no idea what i did though!)

i have checked event viewer and for the 14/06/2009 i have 30 error messages!!

20 of which occurred from (time) 19:59:33 - 20:05:00 so in 5 and a half minutes i have 20 errors!!

around half were caused by windows search, and the others by something called DCOM?

is it safe to uninstall windows search?

Yes, Windows Search is not part of XP. Uninstall it and see if that helps.

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Rich

It's a damn small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. - Andrew Jackson

Hi ,

The above reply SHOULD resolve the problem - Here's a link to the Dcom error from microsoft - basically it's an ignorable error .

DCOM Error Messages Logged in Event Log