The other day i was using my computer and whilst writing a letter the computer just closed down and rebooted. Ithen tried to get back online which i did untill i tried to click on a website then it the computer just turned off and rebooted, and now things have just gone from bad to worse, when i try to boot up it comes on and gats as far as the windows logo with the blue bar flashing acreoss the bottom and then goes to a balck screen with just a white mouse arrow does anyone have a clue what this could be.
Big Problem With booting up.
- Thread starter DOG.LEG
- Start date
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I wonder if you have a nasty infection on your pc!
Have you got up to date anti virus software?
Have you got up to date anti virus software?
What operating system ? XP Home, Pro ?
wanleg said:
I have pro, i have tried the 6 boot up disc for windows but still no joy it does the same thing goes to boot up but only gets as far has the black screen with the windows logo then it goes to a black screen with just the mouse arrow nothing else. Is there anything i can use like a recoverer or something.
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Is it a recovery CD or a full OS disc? It sounds like it's not seing the bootable CD & still trying to boot to the installed OS; make sure the CD drive is enabled & selected as the first boot device in the bios; assuming you can get into it!DOG.LEG said:
tried all these still no joy, i changed bios settings to boot up on A drive with floppy boot up disc, it whent throught the the disc and i have tried everything but nothing still the same its just a black screen. Is there a way i can put in a GOOD hard drive together with the bad one and boot it up that way.
DOG.LEG said:
You could fit a new hard drive and install win from scratch if you have original windows/system restore disc.
Restore discs are tricky though, some rely on a partition on the existing hard drive to install correctly.
Once fresh windows is up and running, install all service packs and updates, install antivirus and antispy/malware and update all of these, enable firewall, then you can attach your old hard drive to access your old files and maybe even fix the problem.
take the old disk out and put it somewhere safe.
rebuild it with a new disk (they are quite cheap)
this reduces the risk that you will overwrite your old disk with windows or clear a partition
you can then reinstall your old disk as a slave and may be able to recover data from it
Also buy a CD R/W drive and write one thousand times:
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
Sorry but it's true.
rebuild it with a new disk (they are quite cheap)
this reduces the risk that you will overwrite your old disk with windows or clear a partition
you can then reinstall your old disk as a slave and may be able to recover data from it
Also buy a CD R/W drive and write one thousand times:
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
I must back up my data
Sorry but it's true.
You're not helping people to help you. When I said "let us know what happens", I really meant it. "No joy" is not a description of what happened.DOG.LEG said:
If I can be sure of anything it's that you haven't yet tried everything.
PC fault finding is a process of part reason and part intuition. If the first thing doesn't work it's just the first step in the process, and the manner in which it doesn't work is significant.
Did you run System Restore, or not?
If not, then how far did you get in your attempt?
I
Igorian
DOG.LEG said:
What's a "6 boot up disk for Windows"?
If it's booting from the CD, you won't see the Windows Logo, as it will start the setup process, so we can assume it's not.
Have you got a Windows Pro CD or a recovery disk as you were asked previously? If it's a damaged Windows installation and you have a Windows disk, you can repair it without data loss. However, the shutting down bit concerns me. Have you checked any of the other hardware at all (Fans, PSU)?
Delux’s suggestion of installing a new hard disc drive (HDD) to do a fresh install will not loose your data as long as you don’t re-format the original disc; but I suspect you’re not at that stage yet!
To pick up on Softus thread; can you actually boot to safe mode? Do you know how to? You say you managed to boot to the A drive but what is this disc? It can’t be an XP system disc as you can’t boot XP install form floppies (well you can but!); so it must be some form of recovery disc but these are always associated with 3rd party recovery software & all the ones I know usually require 2 or more floppies!
As I said in my original post; do you have an XP Operating System (OS) CD? Or a recovery CD that came with the PC? (recovery using this should be automatic). If you changed the boot sequence to A (in bios), the system must be getting as far as bios so you should be able to boot to an XP install CD or recovery CD which, in turn, can enable you to repair the original installation without junking everything on the HDD (similar to the recovery CD & if your lucky!). The OS install process initially uses a RAM drive to boot & not the HDD so this will at least enable you to tell if HDD has a problem. Even if it has, re-formatting may get around it but don’t do that as you will loose your data; go back to Delux’s suggestion.
Finally; never, ever use the default settings for your data as ‘My Documents’ writes everything to one massive C drive & if that goes TU you loose the lot! Always create a supplementary partition D, E or whatever (preferable on a separate HDD) & write your data to that, then you can always re-install the operating system to C, which effectively blanks that drive, without loosing your data! I keep only my OS on the C drive; data, software, films, photos, music etc all live in separate partitions over multiple discs &, as JohnD said, always back up everything up (particularly business data) to DVD RW & put the CD’s on a shelf in your shed just in case your house burns down!
To pick up on Softus thread; can you actually boot to safe mode? Do you know how to? You say you managed to boot to the A drive but what is this disc? It can’t be an XP system disc as you can’t boot XP install form floppies (well you can but!); so it must be some form of recovery disc but these are always associated with 3rd party recovery software & all the ones I know usually require 2 or more floppies!
As I said in my original post; do you have an XP Operating System (OS) CD? Or a recovery CD that came with the PC? (recovery using this should be automatic). If you changed the boot sequence to A (in bios), the system must be getting as far as bios so you should be able to boot to an XP install CD or recovery CD which, in turn, can enable you to repair the original installation without junking everything on the HDD (similar to the recovery CD & if your lucky!). The OS install process initially uses a RAM drive to boot & not the HDD so this will at least enable you to tell if HDD has a problem. Even if it has, re-formatting may get around it but don’t do that as you will loose your data; go back to Delux’s suggestion.
Finally; never, ever use the default settings for your data as ‘My Documents’ writes everything to one massive C drive & if that goes TU you loose the lot! Always create a supplementary partition D, E or whatever (preferable on a separate HDD) & write your data to that, then you can always re-install the operating system to C, which effectively blanks that drive, without loosing your data! I keep only my OS on the C drive; data, software, films, photos, music etc all live in separate partitions over multiple discs &, as JohnD said, always back up everything up (particularly business data) to DVD RW & put the CD’s on a shelf in your shed just in case your house burns down!
You still haven’t answered the questions about what type of operating system disc you have. You probably won’t be able to reinstall the OS if you only have a PC recovery disc! You also say you’ve installed the new HDD with ‘all the required packs’ but what exactly have you done? Depending on what version of XP system disc you have, XP install may have problems formatting if the new HDD is a high capacity disc but there are ways around this. It’s difficult to help if you don’t answer specific questions!
Regarding connecting your old disc, assuming your using IDE drives & not SATA; set the jumper on the new disc to master, install the disc reinstall the OS. Once your up & running on the new disc set the jumper on the original drive to slave & connect it to the intermediate plug on the primary IDE cable, boot the PC & it should see the disc.
Regarding connecting your old disc, assuming your using IDE drives & not SATA; set the jumper on the new disc to master, install the disc reinstall the OS. Once your up & running on the new disc set the jumper on the original drive to slave & connect it to the intermediate plug on the primary IDE cable, boot the PC & it should see the disc.
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