Window XP repair

Thanks for this reply. Frankly, I never saw the BSOD before, but when I tried it per your instructions, it stopped on the blue screen. Here is the message:

STOP: c0000221 {Bad Image Checksum}

The image url.dll is possibly corrupt. The header checksum does not match the computed checksum.

This is a PC that I built myself, about 10 years ago. I have used it on off over the past five years, but it was never mothballed, per se. It's running XP Professional, and I can't remember if it's SP 2 or 3.  The drive is a Western Digital 80 GB 7200 rpm.

I couple of months back, I was doing some work on this system, and it simply just stopped and tried to reboot itself. Everything seemed fine up to that point.  Let me know if there is any other if you need.

Being that all pc hardware is functioning,or can.Try power-off pc (unplug power

supply) from its 110v connection,remove the boards battery,wait 10 minutes,

replace it with a new one..Start pc.On pc start,you'll need to enter the BIOS,reset

date/time/etc,as it returns to default,reset for any add-in cards,reset boot order,

HD1st,cdrom 2nd,save & exit BIOS,let xp start auto.

This time of year,& being an older pc,batteries are at fault,plus,bad battery

results in exactly youre situation..

Windows is finding a problem with the file url.dll at boot time, its contents are not what Windows is expecting. First, please make sure that the BSOD specifies url.dll and not urlmon.dll (or some other similar name).

If the file is not url.dll then please confirm the exact name of the corrupted file in your next reply and ignore the rest of this post.

If the file is url.dll and the rest of this post does not help to get you working again let us know.

Can you boot into safe mode? Use F8 at boot time as before and select "Safe mode". If you can logon in safe mode you could rename url.dll in C:\Windows\system32 to (for example) url.old. Then copy back into C:\Windows\system32 its replica, which should exist in C:\Windows\system32\dllcache.

Failing that, if you can get into safe mode you could try to perform a system restore

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084/

If you cannot get into safe mode, you could boot from Hirens CD to the Mini Windows XP environment and copy url.dll from C:\Windows\system32\dllcache to C:\Windows\system32.

You can download Hirens here

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

If you get working again run a full check of your file system

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265/en-gb

Please don't reset BIOS or replace the battery just yet.

First of all, if the battery has expired:

BIOS will already have been reset and this may well be the cause of your problems. Resetting it again, in all probability, will result in no change - the BIOS settings will automatically reset whenever you switch off the PC (because the battery has no "juice" to preserve them).

Secondly, if the battery has not expired:

You might just make matters worse rather than better and obscure whatever the current problem is until a new problem can be resolved.

I know of no way to effect repair of a (non-)bootable XP hard drive in another PC. Leastways not without knowing why it won't boot in the original PC.

I suspect that you are getting a blue screen crash (also known as BSOD) but that the PC is rebooting too fast for you to see it and give us the important information that it displays.

Keep hitting F8 at boot time and when you get the b&w Windows Advanced Options menu, select the "Disable automatic restart on system failure" option. This should cause the PC to halt when it gets the BSOD so that you can read it. We need to know the BSOD type and all of the numbers associated with it.

When you reply, it might prove beneficial for you to tell us about your system. Brand and model of PC at least, Windows XP version and service pack level, hard disk drive type/manufacturer/model and anything else that you think might be useful.

Was this PC mothballed for a long time or has it been in constant use? Have you made any recent changes to the hardware and/or software?