PC not loading Windows

[ryanbatc]

Tech Support NEEDED please

My wife's Dell is pretty old now at 6+ years.

Yesterday upon power up I get a black screen with white text stating something like "sorry for the inconvenience but Windows did not load successfully, it may be due to a recent hardware change" and so on

So what might be the problem? I checked all the connections - everything was secure and appeared as normal. I wasn't even able to run safe mode with cmd prompt (in attempt to run CHK DSK). The power supply fan was spinning as well

I can get into BIOS, and I can change boot order. I put in a Windows XP install CD and it loaded up the setup files ok, but I don't want to format anything yet. There's data on the HDD that could be important. I don't have an extra HDD to test with...

Any ideas?

[ryanbatc]

As an update I attempted to run the repair option (from windows CD). It didn't do what I thought but it did get me a temporary command prompt - which is what I needed. I ran CHKDSK and the scan found errors on the hard drive. Which was my initial conclusion as to why it wasn't loading XP.

Let's say I want to read the drive from my system. It's not a SATA drive I think its EIDE or whatever those old ones are. How would I go about doing that.

Or, is there something else I should do to remedy the problem?

[MCDesigns]

I wish I could help ryan, but I haven't a clue. Hope someone can though, that does suck.

[Warrant]

if you want to recover the files from the disk you could do the following:

Swith the PC of and drain power (the hardware on/off whitch (rear side of puter) and then the main on/off button).

Remove the main HDD and put it in an external drive casing (approx $20 in a puter store).

Plug it in another puter via USB connection, and read it as an external HDD. You might get warnings, but usually the puter will let you access the drive and recover your precious files (that is, if the HDD is not heavily damaged, otherwise you can offer it to experts for file recovery, but that is a very expensive thing).

Worked for me a couple of times.

If Windows gives you these bites, it usually means the puter has reached the end of its life.

[ryanbatc]

Thanks for your help, I *think* I have it solved.

What I did was insert the original Win XP CD and choose the "repair" option. I then ran CHKDSK, which gave some errors. I then booted into safe mode finally (successfully) and the Windows desktop and all files appeared to be intact. Then I powered off, rebooted without the CD in the drive, and loaded Windows as normal. Things appear to be back..... hehe time will tell.

This PC is definitly on its last leg. I can't believe it's lasted 6 years lol

[Nick C]

It's most likely not the best way to do this and probably not the solution you are looking for, but whenever I have a major windows problem (about once every 2 years, but less often these days) I use that as an excuse to buy a larger, faster HD. I install a nice clean copy of windows onto that drive, then plug the old HD in as a slave unit and can normally access all data on it.

[Lionheart]

If this thing goes, save the hard drive as you can link it to another computer and get the info out of it.

If your data is really important in it, now is the time to start backing up everything to CD's or to a external drive. (External drives are faster as you can drag and drop them, no burn time as like CD's).

Also, you can get huge capacity jump drives (small flash drive sticks) that have perhaps 16 Gigs on them now. I even think there are 32Gig Flash Drives out there. 2 or 3 of them, they fit in your shirt pocket invisibly, should do the job..


Bill

[gigabyte]

Thanks for your help, I *think* I have it solved.

What I did was insert the original Win XP CD and choose the "repair" option. I then ran CHKDSK, which gave some errors. I then booted into safe mode finally (successfully) and the Windows desktop and all files appeared to be intact. Then I powered off, rebooted without the CD in the drive, and loaded Windows as normal. Things appear to be back..... hehe time will tell.

This PC is definitly on its last leg. I can't believe it's lasted 6 years lol


Ryanbatc, count yourself lucky if you got a Dell running with the repair option after a boot sector error, they are not known to recover from those very often. I manage about 100 Dells and I have seen that many times. NOW is the time to back up as others have said, and for data an 8 or 16 GB flash drive is a real cheap way to do it. You might want to look into MS Synctoy, it is a freebie from Microsoft and very easy to install and configure, once you set-up a Sync Pair (your Mydocs to the falsh drive) it is simple, insert the flash drive and start synctoy and click Sync Pair, it will sync only new or updated files so it is quick to use daily.

As for the machine, probably time for a new one, but if you are ever stuck like that again there is a great "undocumented" method to do a complete reinstall of XP with out reformating, which will retain all your data and programs. If you ever need it google "Langda Letter", he has a huge list of great Windows tips, tricks, and goodies on his site, well worth a read.

Oh one other thing you can try in a pinch, google "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows", it is a wonderful tool to have, I use it all the time, it will boot you system with a preinstall version of XP and allow you Admin access to all the data on a drive in the system, as long as the drive is readable you can copy the data off, saved a few of my users who "forgot" to back-up and had a boot drive failure.

Best of luck.