Posted on 04/17/2009 4:01:32 PM PDT by Chickensoup
After a year of dedicated use after a computer mishap described in this thread:
The Computer is Broken. Seems to be Circling the Drain in a Loop. TECH PING LIST SUPERSTARS03.02.08 chickensoup
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1979332/posts#73
Having a similar problem but the boot on the XP Pro disk doesnt seem to help. got to the blue screen once and hit the 'R" key and it loaded but just sat there and hummed. so i started to type in chkdsk/r but it would only let me type in "c"....
It is now back to circling the drain to the white on black screen that tells me to start in safe mode.
A little bit more than you have. Otherwise, if it is the same thing as you described a year ago, those old instructions should fix you again.
Does it make sense?
I hope you made backups of anything that you really cared about.
Your harddrive is dead. You should have realized that a year ago when you posted your first thread.
I hope you backed up your important data.
have new hardrive
Once XP is on, load on your Maxtor software. Once that is on, then restore your last backup. If you last did an incremental, their software should let you identify that and it will find the earlier backups needed to complete it.
You'll be back up to your last backup's status within 4 - 6 hours.
no money, four kids, homeschoolling and supporting them all and the morgages...with two jobs.
It’s possible that you have an overheating problem, you may need to air clean the fans in your computer, or maybe even add another fan. Try using some canned air in the tower, if that doesn’t work, add an extra fan.
did get blue screen again and loading!
A format and reinstall always helps. If you do not have your data backed up, that’s another story
this is where I fell out before.
It is asking me which Windows installation would you like to log onto. it is a one letter field answer.
it also says to press enter to cancel
Ha! I'm posting this on a machine I literally dragged out of a lady's garbage can. It came complete with 19" monitor, printer, scanner, speakers, keyboard&mouse, cabling, and a stack of software disks. It was a windows ME machine, but the OS crapped out, errors so bad it would not boot. No OS disk, however.
I installed PCLinuxOS 2009.1 this afternoon, and am playing around right now. Total cost to me? $15 for a stick of RAM and a cheap LAN card.
If you have a copy of like ‘98 or ME, install that first. Then do the XP install and set it up for dual boot.
I have dual boot on ALL my machines standard.
If you weren’t so far away, I’d give you this machine.
If the hard drive is still running and you have no backups, yes, it is possible to do some things that will bring it back, short of sending it off for “deep recovery services”. Unfortunately, Geek Squad and places like that won’t do that sort of work, using utilities such as Spinrite and such, just because it takes so much time.
Furthermore, although I’ve done all of those things and recovered things few would bother with, going that route can take days. Spinrite alone, if it appears that would be helpful, takes up to a day to do its full scan. Walking someone through this sort of stuff, even if it seems rather easy to me, is almost impossible over a forum. There are too many variables you just need to work around when they appear that might be apparent to me but not to you.
Honestly, if you have a backup as I believe you mentioned you did last year, this won’t be too bad. You’ll need to put the drive in and format it, but as long as your BIOS is set to automatically sense your hard drive, it should be okay. I assume your new drive uses the same cabling as your old one, so as long as that is true, you should be fine formatting it, putting XP on it, then your backup program, then restore from your backup. NOTE: Before formatting, disconnect your backup drive to assure you don’t accidentally format that instead.
I hope the best for you.
Reformat and reload the OS.
That fixes everything OS related.
I format and reload my OSs every 6 months at the max.
Ha! I’m posting this on a machine I literally dragged out of a lady’s garbage can. It came complete with 19” monitor, printer, scanner, speakers, keyboard&mouse, cabling, and a stack of software disks. It was a windows ME machine, but the OS crapped out, errors so bad it would not boot. No OS disk, however.
I installed PCLinuxOS 2009.1 this afternoon, and am playing around right now. Total cost to me? $15 for a stick of RAM and a cheap LAN card.
but this is because you are brilliant. I on the otherhand got lost a few months ago when my numlock was on my laptop.
if you want to see something pathetic read this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2139000/posts
this is the level i am at...
Oh sheesh, now I really feel like crap for my initial snotty comment and I am sorry.
This has happened to me, in my experiences it has either been a bad harddrive or not enough cooling in the computer.
Since your harddrive is fairly new, I'm guessing it's a cooling issue.
Good luck!
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