When I start one of my computers a black screen comes up saying windows did not start successfully and asks me if I want to start windows in Safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt, last known good configuration, or normally.
I've tried choosing all the options and right after I choose any of them the BSOD comes up with the message STOP: 0x000000ED (0x81266CD8, 0xC0000032, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
I tried inserting a windows xp disc to try and reformat it but it doesn't recognize the cd in time.

Is your BIOS set to boot the CD drive prior to the Hard drive?

Just to add:


If not it needs to be. Look at the first screen you see when you turn on the computer.

You should see such as: "Press F2 for Setup | F12 for Boot Menu"

Or perhaps: "Press Delete for Setup | Esc for Boot menu"

Either way you need to set the CD before the HDD.


Then a first try would be to boot into the Recovery Console and run Check Disk.


After the CD loads some temp files it will "Start Windows Setup".

Press "R" to load the Recovery Console.

Press (1) as your system then your password. If no password was ever set just hit "Enter".

Then type: chkdsk /r


Note this might take as much as an hour to run.

Originally Posted by jephree

Press (1) as your system then your password. If no password was ever set just hit "Enter".

Note that this is not the password for your user account but for the Administrator account. Quite frequently that isn't set and you would probably know it if you did set it.

Did you get a specific error message and not just a set of letters and numbers? Reinstalling is a last resort.

The Recovery Console is not interested in User Accounts.

I was able to get the cd to run first and it's reformatting now, I had no clue about putting the cd thing first in the BIOS. Thanks

No problem.

Let us know how it goes.

It is now reformatted and running smoothly. Thanks for the help.

Cool.

Let us know if we can help further in the future.