Windows 2000 boot problems

[Markbot]

We have 12 Dell PCs that came with Windows 2000 preinstalled here where I work. We have had three of them die when a power fail occurred during the boot sequence. After the first two we got UPS's on all the systems to prevent the problem, but someone stepped on the power switch on a power strip during boot up and it happened again. Dell support wants us to format the hard drive like we did on the first two.

The PC is stuck in cycle that just gets to a blue screen and then starts rebooting over and over. Can't pause or break the operation.

Any help that does not involve the use of cracks, warez, keygens or serials from this now reformed forum would be greatly apprciated.

[Markbot]

You know I feel reformed personally, muck like this forum as of late. In the olden days I would have used my Super Arconis Utilities 2003 CD from Michael K.H. Au-Yeung. But instead, I'm going to actually download the shareware version and use that.

Thanks for the help with both this PC issue and moral issue.

[catachresis]

Hey Markbot, your Dells ought to have come with re-installation/emergency disks. If they didn't, you should sue Dell for selling you illegal copies of Microsoft software. That would be the economically sensible thing to do -- as well as the good thing and patriotic thing, as our current Prez would say. Just so long as you scored some cash.

That said, if the mobos are still in fine functioning order and there's nothing wrong with the harddrives, why not wipe the faulty installs from dos (with a win98 boot disk or other such) and either reinstall fresh or migrate over a disk image as Poko suggested? Or you could do fresh reinstalls of all three.

Good luck.