Boot off CD & Pick R & take your Pick to fix.

Interesting thing about Safe Mode. Sometimes, even when a computer boots into it, 3rd party drivers can be loaded. There was this one computer at my school, and it was displaying the Windows XP boot screen hours on end. I pressed F8 and selected Safe Mode after a cold boot, and I saw a Norton Ghost driver being loaded on the screen. Apparently, it seems that a corrupted Ghost driver was holding the computer up and not letting it continue. The moral is Safe Mode may not even work if there is a persistent driver being loaded. I hope those school IT people figures it out soon.

Yeah, it sures sounds like Ay Bay is getting stuck in a "boot loop". I read it as a good boot up from a shut down but a boot loop off a restart, so whatever is corrupted is at a very early level and needs a complete shutdown to clean it out of memory.

Av Bay, it certainly could be an installed program if that program adds an item to your startup routine. I'm surprised you keep reinstalling Windows. There's so many repair options in Windows that reinstalling hardly strikes me as something you should have to do frequently. Especially since I haven't heard anyone else report these problems with earlier giveaways.

I don't mean to insult you, but from your posts, we can't tell what you know or what troubleshooting you've done. So let me tell you what steps most of us would take if we were stuck in a boot loop. You should check for a newly installed startup item after you get into windows. If you haven't done it, one way is to click start and then either in the search box in the new style menu or by clicking run in the classic Windows start menu, type msconfig and click or double click to start it. That configuration tool allows you to do a lot of stuff that helps when you're having boot up problems. You can check for a new startup entry and sometimes turn it off or you can set the machine to reboot without any startup items and/or any Windows services to see if that's the problem.

Or try to boot up in safe mode when you're stuck in the loop. Press F8 (sometimes you have to hit it more than once) as soon as your Bios screen dissappears. That will also cause Windows to load with the bare minimum of drivers which will also confirm that it's something you installed, and not a Windows corruption. Also try running chkdsk to fix corruptions either when you get in to Windows anywhere or by the "using safe mode with command prompt" option you'll see when hitting F8, or the "repair your computer" option under F8 that will also give you access to various repair options, including a command prompt. You can also use restore points from repair your computer or access a backup. If you've never run chkdsk out of regular Windows, your select your hard drive (C:), selecting "properties" from the right-click menu, selecting the tools tab and clicking the Check Now button. If you have "automatically fix system file errors" checked in Vista, you'll have to shut down then reboot before it'll work, though you can uncheck that box and just run an analysis without rebooting. Also under F8, there's "disable automatic restart on system failure" that will break the loop for you. Of course, you'll still have to fix whatever's causing the loop or you'll never get a good restart. Besides chkdsk, you should also run sfc - system file checker - which can also be typed into search in the new menu, run in the old menu, or in any command prompt. This "hidden" utility can check all your Windows system files for corruption and replace the bad ones. In XP you sometimes need your installation or recovery disks, in Vista, all the backups are stored on the system.

Again, I'm not trying to insult by telling you things you may already now, but you did ask for help, and it looks like you're not using all your repair options if you're reinstalling a lot.

Lee & Robert.. which program are you referring to? Is it that cleaner one? Puleeze let me know so I can delete it! Thanks!
{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}} ~ Lauri

I read continous sequence may be that mean keep rebooting! been geting software from GOTD for over a year only one not work but I do read the post's be for down load & check the web site to see if the Forums & help is good,as for bugs most in windows!

Yep, you're right Lee.
Too many bugs in today's program...

I got stuffed today by todays gaotd (software).

If it wasn't for Norton Ghost I would be crying myself to sleep.

The application removed files other than the software I uninstalled.

I could not boot, I tried everything, so for 10 hours I have been going through different ideas, even finding solutions via the net on Unbuntu.

I finally tried one last thing, a backup I created yesterday.

Ohh well the software will be stewing in the recycle bin in 5.4.3.2....1 gone.

@hotdoge3: I don't think he can even boot Windows...

Michelle > Same thing here... My computer just barely works ;-)

You always have to be careful what you put on your computer not that I have anything against giveaway of the day, but I rarely download and install anything on my computer. I usually only install casual realarcade games. I use to install programs a lot on my old computer and the same thing happened. It just messed up after a while.

Event Viewer? may help may be not,try this Control Panel > System > System Startup System failure and debugging untick Automaticully restart, now it will stop & you get the info you need to fix the stop #,like STOP 0x0000008E Blue Screen Error ,win32ksys,so on,If you send back the stop # & the file or sys dll name so we can help you is it XP? & sp3? we hear to help.

Frankly I never heard of such a program being offered on GOTD.
Unless you provide us with more accurate details it still remains guessing in the dark ,and I think none of us will be able to help you,even if we really want to.

As a general rule even installing a tiny piece of software can make your system unstable.So it's always a good thing to read other users comments if you're not sure what the software does to your system.
But it's unfair blaming GOTD for all the computer woes you might have experienced.
So please provide us more details...and just maybe we can help you.
That's what this forum is for.
Thanks.

BTW, what does system close and open again mean? Does it mean rebooting? And what other programs ran other than the BIOS? Any messages on the screen, like Operating System not found?

I remember about hearing Recovery9 somewhere. I think it was the system recovery software on my HP laptop. It called itself Recovery Manager. What version of Windows are you using? PC make and model? Processor and RAM? Please tell us more about your HW and SW configuration. Also, were you running whatever Recovery9 is without reading its instructions or knowing what the piece of software does? If Revovery9 is a system backup software and you messed with it, then something like the inability to boot Windows is bound to happen.

A note on Giveaways and viruses: I have been using GAOTD for over a year, and I personally have never downloaded one with malware on it. I have heard of one giveaway that had a self installing toolbar that got flagged as a potentially unwanted software, but it was uninstallable. That seems like the worst there ever had been.

first case was in January. I don't remember which program was the cause because noticed the problem later. In this instance Windows System Backup could not restore to the date before GoAD although a restore point was shown at an earlier date.
third case was about 3 weeks ago, I think it was RecoveryUp9 (???). Before installing it I installed Norton Ghost and tested, it worked. So Norton was OK. As I run GoAD program Recovery I was requested to reboot, which I did. Then the system stareted to run in a loop,BIOs Setup appeared at the screen, than system closed, opened again with BIOS and closed and so on.So windows could not be oppened. Then I tried to restore to the date before installing Recovery .. by Norton Ghost. Restoring was done to the date before installing Recovery, but problem with rebooting remain. only if I cut the power from socket, I could get Windows opened, but after that while robooting the said loop was again there.
Since I never download any other programs at the said times than GoAD, I guess the problems might have something to do with GoAD downloads.

Are you suggesting that GOTD downloads might be responsible for your inability to restore your windows backup?

Just from reading your description (which I found a little difficult to follow) it sounds like your system restores, failed reboots, and Nortons Image restores may possibly have something to do with not restoring your MBR, and the existing MBR being corrupt or mismatched for the rest of the hard drive.

Without more information, like the actual error messages that you saw - and more information about your setup and detailed information about the steps you took - any further assistance would only be guessing.

Welcome to the forums.
Maybe you could tell us what program you think caused all of this?

in the first instance Windows' back up failed. Even with Microsoft's help the problem couldnot be solved, so that I have had to install the whole system from beginning.
In the second case (I think it was Recovery9 ....?, I started the program through, but after reboot, Windows didnot start, but closed and rebooted (only set up) in continous sequence.I tried to restore the system to an earlier date than the download from GAoD date by Norton Ghost but the problem was not solved, although the system was restored to the earlier date, which is misterious. So I needed to install the whole windows second time from beginning.
(In the third case the problem was solved by restoring so I don't eleborate.)
I wonder whether other people have experienced similar problems?

I don't think it is a virus problem (I run f-secure 2009). Does somebody have an idea, what it could be. I do not download anymore from GAoD, until I know what is the cause.