My middle son bought a used computer last week, which worked fine at first. He set it up in my office until we could figure out a spot to put it for keeps. Well, we figured that out, and got him set up in his own space. The tower and monitor had been carefully set on the floor out of the way so we could rearrange furniture and all that fun stuff.

When he got it all set up again and turned it on, it just went to the Windows screen and stayed there. This morning, I tried to see if I could help him out. So, I rebooted it. And it rebooted continuously before stopping at the Windows screen.

Except that the silly thing doesn't like the new spot, I can't figure out what's wrong. Nothing had jarred the tower during all this. It just sat on the floor by a bookcase.

Any ideas?

Hey there ,


What operating system is it?

and also did it come with a recovery disc ? ,


also check what MadGamer has said below .

Could be that a device lead has come loose such as a CD ROM, or hard disc cable, and may need removing from the device and re inserting?

Yup ND, it's more than likely some sort of loose connection. If you are confident in opening the case (and I KNOW you are) then simply reseat all of the cables and cards inside.

In addition and in case it's not hardware related, tap F8 on boot up and select "Last known good configuration" from the menu that presents itself.

The OS is XP--Home, I think. I'm not sure what disks it came with. I know he got the OS disk, and two others.

Everything in the case seemed snug enough. So, we tried the F8 thing--which I'd forgotten about, Hengis. I used that often enough with the PC I had before I got my new one--and that seems to have corrected it. It booted into the desktop this time, at any rate!

Thanks all of you for responding! This place rocks!

Great! - Glad to hear it's up and working again

[Fixed]

Thanks for the great comment NeenahDee.