I have a PC (HP Workstation xw4600) that’s running Windows XP that will not boot. I recently had issues getting the correct date and time to display on it. The CMOS battery died on the PC so I replaced the CMOS battery.
After replacing the PC’s CMOS battery, the PC will not boot from the hard dive. Besides replacing the CMOS battery, I did not make any other changes to the PC’s hardware. Prior to replacing the CMOS battery, the PC would boot normally.
Now when the PC is turned on, the HP splash screen is shown, and then a black screen pops up offering to boot the PC in safe mode. 5 options are given:
- Safe Mode.
- Safe Mode with Networking
- Safe Mode with Command Prompt.
- Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked).
- Start Windows Normally.
I have tried booting using all 5 options listed on the black screen but none of them get the PC to boot normally.
After choosing any of the 5 options, the Windows XP loading screen flashes for less than a second, the PC restarts, and shows the two screens I mentioned earlier. Anytime I power off the PC and turn it back on, it goes through the same boot loop that I described above.
I have also tried:
- Making sure the HDD is first in the boot order.
- Manually changing the date + time in the BIOS.
- Booting from a USB drive and running a chkdisk command via command prompt. chkdsk didn’t find any issues.
