Emergency Windows XP Computer Help Needed

[savedbygrace]

I need help.

Windows XP SP2 on my computer will not start. Earlier this morning, everything was going great, then Firefox locked up while doing a Google search. Locked up tight, and I had to press and hold the power button for several seconds to shut down.

Now, when I power up, everything goes well through POST until Windows tries to start up, then the screen goes black and all disk activity ceases. After waiting several minutes with nothing happening, pressing the power button for a fraction of a second shuts the computer down.

I've tried booting to Last Known Good Configuration - same result.

I've tried booting into Safe Mode - same results. When I boot so I can see each startup event happening, the last event that prints to the screen is:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\FONTS\vgaoem.fon

Then, all disk activity ceases and nothing else happens.

I built this computer myself - it's a P4 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM on an Asus mobo.

I do not want to lose all the data on the boot drive. Some of it is not backed up since two days ago, including Quicken and QuickBooks.

One big obstacle is that I originally installed this from an early WinXP full install CD, before SP1, and I've updated through SP1 to SP2. So, booting from the install disc won't help. I do have an SP2 disc from Microsoft, but I doubt that is bootable.

Help!

[Turbopilot]

I didn't say anything about your comment to me; I said suggestions to the OP to "get a Mac" were flippant and rude in this case. See e.g. posts 34, 64, and to a slightly lesser extent 32.

I will admit that because you responded to me, I had mistakenly assumed without checking that you had in fact made one of the flippant posts, so I apologize for falsely accusing you of evangelizing on this thread.

[HAL9000]

The matter is honorably settled. Okay.

[savedbygrace]

WOW! I never know that before! Please accept 10,000 points for the Post of the Year.

As soon as I can get all the pieces together, I'll be making one of those slipstream CDs. You just saved me a big 'ol pile of money.

BTW, Staples was having a special on a 300GB Maxtor 7200 rpm ATA drive with 16MB cache. $99 in store, no mail in rebate needed. There might be better deals out there, but I was in Staples for something else, so I grabbed it.

Thanks again.

[savedbygrace]

That is an excellent idea. Thanks.

[VOA]

I'll add another 10,000 points to your Post-Of-The-Year account.
I've never had to resurrect a PC yet, but your pointers make it sound
less daunting. Thanks.

[perfect stranger]

Take the other computer and toss it in the trash.

That would be a mistake.

[perfect stranger]

Thanks for the info.

I look forward to having one of my machines on linux (or whatever it's called to have some other type of OS), but right now I just don't know anything about this stuff.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Staples was having a special on a 300GB Maxtor 7200 rpm ATA drive with 16MB cache. $99 in store, no mail in rebate needed.

That is a damn good buy...

Some were suggesting Knoppix...which is useful ...there is another choice ...SLAX....new one just out ( see DistroWatch ) and the CD is a much smaller download - less than 200Mb ..the small version of Knoppix is 695Mb...there is also a DVD version...at 4.1 Gigabyte,....don't know what all it has on it.

[savedbygrace]

Well, I'm still working my way through this. The instructions for slipstreaming had an error in one of the commands. Or rather, on my wife's XP computer, the command had to be changed slightly in order to make the integration step work. That provided 10 or 15 minutes of agony, but I finally got it sorted.

Then, my wife's computer has an old CD burner that apparently doesn't work for burning, probably needs some long-discarded software installed. I'll have to wait until the 3rd PC in the house is freed up so I can start all over again. I know the CD burner in that one works. It doesn't have a burning app, so I'll have to DL and install one - probably Nero 7, which has a trial version.

So, I'm still working through some stuff. Isn't Windows XP supposed to be easy? LOL.

[savedbygrace]

Thank you all for your help. Please my post #152 for an interim explanation of what's been happening.

I wish I had put the drive in another PC and run chkdsk on it FIRST. It might have resolved everything, but maybe not.

In any event, the tip that 'This is a Lame ID' gave me about slipstreaming was worth the extra agony. Once I figured out that one of the switches in a couple of the commands listed in the link he posted should have been typed as /s instead of -s (for example) on my wife's system, everything went pretty smoothly.

The drive is now living happily in this same computer as a third drive, through an ATA PCI card, and it doesn't show the slightest indication of having any problems. I haven't lost any data whatsoever. The only hitch at the moment is that I've misplaced a CD I bought with updated software for my Epson Perfection 1650. The software that Epson has for it doesn't work in SP2.

Everything else is working great. So again, thank you all for helping me. This is the greatest place for getting help with computer problems. Even though I've built 6 or 10 computers, I'm not a top dog when it comes to WinXP software problems.

I hope I haven't missed pinging anyone with this reply. I tried to get everyone who replied on this thread.

[firewalk]

Threads like this have helped me many times
Thank you for posting it

[VOA]

Thanks for having posted with your problem; it generated a very instructive thread.

During my time in Los Angeles, I listened to both computer shows on KABC and
KFI radio.
The number of times they got calls about dying and dead disk drives
as well as data recovery was innumerable.
In fact, the mantra of the KFI host (Jeff Levy) practically was
"What part of 'back-up' do you not understand!?"

[Political Junkie Too]

By the way, another thing I do on my computer is nightly backups. I use a program called Backup MyPC from Sonic. The program lets me backup to DVD, which is what I originally did but it quickly became cumbersome. Here's what I ultimately did:

My main drive is 250Gb. I bought a 160Gb drive (mostly because that's what was available) and partitioned it into four 40Gb drives. Each drive keeps a generation of backups. I configured Backup MyPC to do a full system backup to files on the second HD every two weeks and an incremental backup each night of just what changed. Each full backup and associated incremental backups run on separate partitions, so I'm keeping four generations of backups. I use the Task Manager to run the jobs each day.

Lately, I'm beginning to fill up my backup drives, so I'm going to have to reconfigure my backups to be three partitions of approx 53Gb and redo my nightly tasks. It's a bit tedious to set up, but once it's done it's great. The only downside is that Windows XP requires the login ID that runs the jobs to have a password.

I've had to restore from my backups two or three times since doing this, mostly because installs or upgrades of software messed something up. The restore process (for me) is to reinstall Windows XP (doesn't matter which version), then reinstall Backup My PC, then restore the latest full system backup (which should bring XP back to current), then restore all the incremental backups since the last full backup. As luck would have it, my restores were always in the second week of incrementals, meaning about a dozen restores before my system was back.

Once done, everything was back to normal as if the outage never happened. I suppose you could replace a defective C: drive, and then restore your backups to that in order to replace a drive and still have your old configuration in place without losing anything.

-PJ

[savedbygrace]

What I also did was to print the key # on the disc when I printed the label with my Epson R800 disc printer.

[RichardW]

I love XP. It is lightyears ahead of Win98.

[savedbygrace]

I forgot to mention that I posted some info on #133 that explained what I was facing last week. FWIW.

[HAL9000]

I've been asked to see if my univ can set up a video link for me w/another school, using a "macintosh computer with an iSight camera". I know we have set ups for videoconferencing w/PCs and am checking on the mac availability.

Update - Skype released a new version for Mac today that supports videoconferencing. I just tested a video chat with a PC user and it works.

iChat is still the preferred application for Mac-to-Mac video chat, but the new Skype looks better than AOL Instant Messenger for Mac-to-PC video chat, especially on the PC side.