Endless Paradigm

Basically I'm working on a friend's XP laptop, because it had some serious issues with viruses/malware which ended up cutting off the admin access to regedit, task manager etc, and safe mode did not work.

So in the end i decided to back up the files and do a format and fresh install of XP SP3. After installing the first part of XP and then rebooting it to finalize the installation, it would briefly pop up with an error message, then commence an endless boot loop of the same thing over and over. I tried various things but then decided to use a utility disc, UBCD, to format the hard drive again and then try installing XP again.

Well i'd just finished formatting, exited and shutdown, to find now that it won't boot at all. or I'll get the logo (Sony VAIO) and it'll just shutdown again.
The power lights will come on but no screen image.

So basically, I'm lost at what to do with this 'the lights are on but nobody's home' problem.

Please, any help is better than none.

hardware failure i think

faulty hdd?

poo poo... its a laptop
idk what to do either :(

that's what I'm thinking, but it's very sudden, clearly since I've been fixing it. Not even sure how to get the damn thing open

I actually experienced something like this at work today... the laptop may very well be dead.

But before calling that...

A) Let it cool if you've been pressing it for a while.
B) Use a vacuum on any ventilation points on the laptop. I had to work on a laptop that kept crapping out on XP install - the vacuum saved it.

okay thanks, I'll give it a go.

Also, did you do a Full Format or a Quick Format? It sounds like it was infected by some pretty bad viruses which may have even survived a quick format and now they're causing issues again.

SkyDX Wrote:Also, did you do a Full Format or a Quick Format? It sounds like it was infected by some pretty bad viruses which may have even survived a quick format and now they're causing issues again.

I didn't think anything could survive any kind of format unless it's in the boot sector. But boot sector viruses are uncommon these days.

As has already been suggested sounds like a hardware problem. Either a dead HDD (installing an OS is a pretty hard drive intensive task and could have pushed it over the edge) or some other failure. Try booting it without the HDD attached and running a memory test from USB or CD.

i did a full format the first time as far as I know. The second time i used UBCD and one of the apps on that to format... didn't work.
I'm thinking it's possible the battery/power board is dead. I can't even work out how to open the laptop up and get the HDD out :/

Could be an unstable system (eg overheating/overclocking etc).

The only difference between a full format and quick format from what I understand:
Quick format just writes the new filesystem.
Full format does a scan of all the sectors before writing the filesystem.  I believe newer versions of Windows actually also clear every single sector on the drive as well, to allow the drive controller to indicate whether there are any bad sectors on disk.

Reset the bios settings>? if you can press "del" on start-up>?

Can you enter the bios settings at all?