Ok, I have a strange problem, and I'm not sure w

[Sym33]

Ok, I have a strange problem, and I'm not sure what caused it. I would be greatful for any help.

It started (or at least I think it started) when a friend wanted to see the website I was developing. I have a domain that points to my IP so people can see my website running loaclly, although up to now only I had used it. I gave him the URL and they couldnt get in. (This was apache, and the site is in php, thats why I had to do it this way). It turned out I needed to give them permission through the firewall (kerio) so I created a new rule that their IP could get incoming and outgoing TCP connections through the application apache.exe. They looked at the site for about 10 minutes, then left, and I deleted the rule. I did all of this using remote control as I was upstairs at the time and it is the downstairs computer that runs XP and apache. I came downstairs to see the computer running the screensaver, but it looked a little odd (it was in 16 colours) so I moved the mouse to look at it, and it was running in 16 colour mode. I thought that was strange, so I logged on, and then all that come up was a black screen (DOS) with a white flashing cursor at the top, and nothing I could do would get rid of it or get out of it, so I turned it off and then on again.

When windows reloaded, it was still in 16 colour mode and 800 x 600 instead of 1024 x 768 true colour. I disconnected the broadband internet, and looked at the event log for any clues, but I couldnt find anything unusual (at least to me, but I'm no expert at logs) in the log, so I checked the services, and couldn't see anything unusual there either, and checked startup programs and all appeared fine there too. I tried to change it back using display settings, but was told my displayer driver was written for an older version of windows and was incompatible, so it had reverted to the standard driver. No matter what I did, it wouldnt accept the driver, so I did driver rollback (to an ancient driver it came with which isn't very good, but it would be ok to get it back to normal, I thought.)

I did this, and then restarted. However, things got worse. It restarted in true colour mode and in 1024 x 768 like normal, but when I logged on, it came up very slow, and then froze just after loading the first 2 startup programs. I did control + alt + delete to bring up windows security, and clicked task manager, but then windows disappeared completely and no task manager came up. I tried control + alt + delete anggain, and got the windows security box, but no matter what I clicked, nothing did anything. SO I restarted again, and the same thing happened. I got a quick glance of the services running before it crashed though, and the only thing that wasn't normally there was 3 instances of dwwin (Windows error reporting service according to version info?)

I tried restarting in safe mode,which worked. I looked throug the services again, and all seemed fine. Recently, chkdsk told me that there were problems on the hard driev (see my other post) so I decided to run chkdsk, but it told me the disk was locked and couldnt be done, and that it would do it on the next restart. On restart in safe mode again, the same problem happened. I tried terminating everything but system vital services, but no luck.

So I came here, looking for help. What can I do?

Thankyou

[Kupe]

Have you tried a "System Restore?" You can access this through the "Help and Support" dialog from the "Start Menu." Search on System Restore and start the System Restore Wizard. You can do this in Safe Mode or Normal Mode.

Good Luck.

[Kupe]

Have you tried a "System Restore?" You can access this through the "Help and Support" dialog from the "Start Menu." Search on System Restore and start the System Restore Wizard. You can do this in Safe Mode or Normal Mode.

Good Luck.

[Sym33]

I disabled system restore as I was running out of hard drive space :(

[Sym33]

I disabled system restore as I was running out of hard drive space :(

[Axolotl]

Your problem sounds familiar to me. I had once installed a program and the system hung. After restarting the computer it went ahead to the normal scan disk mode, but it reboots itself after checking halfway and this cycled on! This could only be stopped when I went to safe mode but the Windows was running extremely slow. I circumvented this problem after checking the integrity of the files and removing the critter program I installed that kept crashing the system.

Anyway... :P

Is your problem to do a chkdsk or scandisk of your HDD? If so, have you tried booting in DOS mode or using a floppy boot?