Boot Problem

I got home yesterday and I turned on my computer, which is running on windows xp. After it got past the part in the loadup where it has the windows logo with the little bar underneath (hard to explain, but you may know what i mean) it restarted.

It won't even get to where i can see the desktop before it restarts. I tried doing it in safe mode but it went to a blue screen that says i am missing the windows system file "default" or that it is corrupted or not being recognized. It then dumps all my physical memory, and when thats done, it restarts.

It may be a virus that my programs didn't catch. I don't know what to do so if anyone can help me, it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

(p.s. this just had to happen on the factions preview weekend too )

Not good

Try this, re-install windows on top of your current version of windows, it should give an option this should repair any system files that may of been corrupt.

It could also be a virus, file corruption, or worse hardware failure.

Can you give part of the white text / error code on the blue screen message?

(my pc video card fan failed, the replacement fan for the card will be in on Monday and the laptop is not able to play GW so I'm with you on missing the event).

Assuming that this is probably software related, this is another example of a problem that could have been resolved easily had Norton GoBack (part of Norton Systemworks and possibly still a stand-alone product) been installed on the system.

GoBack is a roll-back program that loads and can be accessed even before Windows, and can restore the system to a point in time before the problem occured. It is a stronger product than Windows System Restore, and can also be accessed from within Windows. Just be sure to give it time to copy the contents of your hard drive(s) after defragmenting (which wipes out Goback's restore point data).

Best of luck in the meantime.