"I'll go get tech support"
Posted on 07/21/2006 7:30:18 AM PDT by 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!
I'm beginning to suspect you are correct.
This will be the third time I've had to take the same action in the past year or two. I'm glad I have this MacBook Pro running Mac OS X v10.4.7 to use while the PC is down.
The WinXP PC is my main computer for business use, and the Mac is for video editing and such.
I'd like to help but my laptop did the same thing last weekend. I spent several hours of effort trying to repair or reinstall Windows and nothing worked.
I'd say your HD fried.
Up to 20 minutes? That might be a great tip for me in this case. I'm going to try starting up again, and let it sit there for at least 20 minutes, just to see if this is the case.
See post # 27. Looks like I was close enough.
> If you have another machine available to you, download a Knoppix Linux Live CD image and use it to boot the sick machine. Then you will be able to (hopefully) see the contents of the drive and copy the vital contents accross the network to another machine, where they can be burned to a CD/DVD.
That is a really great idea! No reason why it wouldn't work, except...he's got to get into the BIOS and set the machine to boot from CD rather than HD or floppy.
And as an aside, I can attest that any Windoze installation can be resurrected to some form of functionality. I've brought completely hosed ProLiant servers and their damaged SCSI disks back to life to get customer-related data off before the disks ate their heads. Unless you have hardware-related damage (dismounted platter or disk controller failure), you're not completely toast (yet).
Do you have a second computer or access to one? If so take out your hard drive
install it in computer#2 as slave
copy all important files to hard drive of computer#2
remove hard drive from computer#1
reformat and reinstall windows on your computer#1
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ANOTHER APPROACH:
create an ultimate boot CD. I realize this is a pain in the butt. You will see all of your files when you boot from ultimate boot CD
Good hint on the capacitors, although I seem to recall that problem was mostly confined to MSI mobos, and not ASUS.
I might be mistaken, but I think the majority of bad capacitors ended up with MSI and they actually settled out of court in a class action suit brought against them.
You're screwed. Pull your primary drive, buy another hard drive, install your OS, set the old drive up as a slave drive and then scavenge what data you need off it.
UBCD does the same as Knoppix these days
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
The capacitors ended up in a lot of different products, not just computer motherboards. And, AFAIK, they affected multiple mobo manufacturers. We have replaced dozens of Dell motherboards, which are made by Foxconn, I believe.
Sounds like a hardware problem. If it were me I would ...
First, get Norton Disk Doctor and boot from that ... let if try to debug and fix what is wrong. If that fails, then ...
Get a new hard disk, install it as primary. Take your existing hard disk, set it to secondary, change setup to reflect the changes, install XP from original disk to the new boot drive, then try to access existing disk and transfer apps and data to new boot drive. Once that is done, you can download SP1 and 2. After the changes are all done, reformat the old boot drive after running a check disk so it can kill the bad sectors.
my 2 cents.
XP repair option leaves your files intact. All repairs are not successful but if it is successful it will bring your XP system back to the original state. You will have to reinstall SP2.
If you are very concerned about your files I would get them onto another hard drive before using XP repair
With a Knoppix CD or a UBCD CD you would slam dunk be able to boot up your computer and if you are able to connect to a network (your Ethernet is functional) you can e-mail your important files to yourself
I must have misunderstood your problem, sorry. I thought it booted in safe mode, but I guess not. It looks like your getting better advice than I can provide, so I just shut-up. :)
Somewhere during the second "repair" process Bill Gates wants you to enter the magic number. I don't know what which number you would use or what will happen if you are running a disk other than the original. What problems do you anticipate if you use the original to repair?
I've used my original, SPnothing, to repair my SP2 system. It makes it an SPnothing system which I have to update to SP2. I haven't noticed anything different doing it this way than if I boot from a slipstreamed CD with SP2.
Not much help to you now but it's always good to have a backup to use when this happens. I had backups on other hard drives when my problems started but I didn't want to lose the data between backup and the start of problems. Since only my operating system partition was damaged I was able to save everything I wanted even though I had to make a new XP installation.
I lost a MB to bad capacitors, and the machine will not turn on without the caps. His machine turns on, so I don't think that's what we have here.
Also, the caps make a strong ozone smell when they fail. I thought my house was on fire. It's very noticable.
When I looked at the MB, the caps all had what looked like chalk coming out the top.
Also, the capacitor problem goes back a couple of years, so if he has a MB with bad caps, it would have already failed.
"I'll go get tech support"
Actually, FreeRepublic is one of the first places I'd think of posting something like this. As a FReeper, you have access to an incredible pool of talent on a wide variety of subjects.
Since everyone's talking about hardware problems and you say that you built your own system, I suggest getting into the system and re-seating all of your connectors. IDE ribbons/SATA cables, IDE/EIDE devices, AGP devices, etc. If you "rebuild" the system with the current components (sans the proc), you may fix the system without having to go through all this mess.
Again, just pull everything out and reinstall it all. Never know when a poorly seated DIMM or screwy AGP video card might cause a boot failure.
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