...Whooops

Mr.Ferret · Post by **Mr.Ferret** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 10:29 am

Hiya fellas i got some major computer problems appaning right now :S

Started this morning the computer had locked up overnight whilst it was downloading stuff / playing music. so this morning i restart it and it turns on but the network was down so i restart again and this time it goes on about how windows wasnt shut down properly blah blah blah start windows normaly or in safe mode etc etc i hit ANY of these and it goes to a black screen like its loading then it just restarts :S i refuse to format caus i still need some stuff off that hdd the only option my dad had is to get another hhd boot it with that and copy the stuff i need off but i think there should be an easier way than that.

HELP!

r8response · Post by **r8response** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:22 pm

take your old mans option. its the quickest and safeest option avaliable to you at the momment

Exar Kun · Post by **Exar Kun** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:39 pm

You could boot off the Windows CD and try to repair the install. Might be a corrupted boot record or something.

Blowtus · Post by **Blowtus** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 1:56 pm

repair install is quite likely to work, though if you have hardware issues it may have trouble. At least it will narrow down the problem if it does fail

ysu · Post by **ysu** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:04 pm

If you have the rollback enabled you can do that too...(I always leave it on for this exact reason)
But if it's indeed a HW failure you cannot fix it from software - only make it worse; for example if it's a HDD bearing or electronics problem...writing to a faulty HDD is basically bye-bye data.

Mr.Ferret · Post by **Mr.Ferret** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:35 pm

its definatly not a hard wear problem.

ive tryed to repair the instal but it keeps hanging at instaling new devices (so could well be a hardwear prob) :S think i better start hunting down that other hdd

EzyRider · Post by **EzyRider** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:52 pm

If I can throw my 2 cents in, try removing ALL hardware other than the hard drive and your video card, then boot up. If it succeeds, and there are no issues, turn it off, add another piece (the network card for example), and reboot. Keep going until you find the culprit. Process of elimination, as it were.

If you're unable to determine what's causing the issue, worst case scenario, take the entire board out and repeat the process. (Sounds stupid, but my wife's mongrel machine had the same issue.. only thing that cured it was oddly enough, a change of case. Must have been earthing out somewhere. Meh.)

If you absolutely HAVE to reinstall, try loading a small 2-4gb drive with windoze 2k/xp and check the drive for errors. Other than that.. looks like a backup/reinstall somehow.

Good luck mate, it's never fun reinstalling everything and making sure you've backed up everything. (Don't forget to back up your email!!)

CLP · Post by **CLP** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:32 pm

quite often you can just reinstall windows on top of itself and it'll fix things. i'm not sure how that compares to choosing the "repair" option though. might well be doing the same thing!

if you have a spare machine floating around, then drop it in there as a slave drive and extract/recover data, or as your dad suggested, plonk in a spare hard drive to boot from.

how have you determined that it's not a hardware issue?

i can't recall exactly, but if you start the recovery console from the cd, can you roll back the registry from there to the last good config?

hope you can fix it!

CLP

Mr.Ferret · Post by **Mr.Ferret** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:47 pm

well ive tried doing a repair instilation over the old windows and it always gets stuck at installing new devices at 34 minutes (left it on all day and it got down to 33 minutes...) so i think ill just try and plonk that hdd into another comp and try and recover my stuff then format it (my lfs and everything else is on my other drive which seems to have nothing wrong with it)

Exar Kun · Post by **Exar Kun** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:53 pm

Did you try just loading up the recovery console from the Windows CD? You could try fixboot or one of the other tools. Otherwise booting off another disk is your best choice I guess.

Mr.Ferret · Post by **Mr.Ferret** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 4:08 pm

well considering that now im halfway stuck inbetween an reinstilation (repair instilation not a format) i think that wont work

matticooper · Post by **matticooper** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:44 am

Take one of your RAM chips (or replace your RAM chip with another)... I had the almost IDENTICAL problem... crashing... wouldn't reload windows over the top etc etc...

Mr.Ferret · Post by **Mr.Ferret** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:04 pm

ok guys all is well im on my comp right now. Got another hdd booted up windows on it backed up the stuff on the old drive to my ipod formated old drive and reinstaled windows

Vilante · Post by **Vilante** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:53 pm

Great news, it didn't seem promising for a while there.

Bluesman · Post by **Bluesman** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:28 pm

Exar Kun wrote:You could boot off the Windows CD and try to repair the install. Might be a corrupted boot record or something.

What Mick said