Computer Not Booting!

Ok so my desktop is deciding not to boot up. It started not fully shutting down so I just hard turned it off last night, now when turning it on I get to the black page asking if I want to start in Safe Mode or Normally.

No choice from that page works.

When trying to start normally. It loads up the Starting Windows XP Home screen with the little loading bar, then it goes to just a blank black screen.

I have HP System Recovery, but that looks like it’s going to wipe all my installed programs…? Help!

Aw boy… I know this problem really well, to well enough…
Let’s see here, well this problem happened to me, about half a year ago, and windows just stopped loading (booting). So this is what I did, and it worked.

1)Take your WinXP disc / Put it in CDROM (der!)
2)Let the winxp cd process the data.
3)After it is at the screen where it asks you, do you want to repair/create whole new ex. Click on Install Full New Windows Or something around those lines.
4)When you click that, it will tell you that it’s looking for a previous version of Windows Installed.
5)It should find the one you originally had, and it will give you a phew options. Press ‘R’, I belive to repair the current selection.
6)After it’s done, rebooot

Well so what happens, is that it totally deletes your WindowsXP, and starts it over again. But your data on your partition/HD is all still there.
After it’s done rebooting, wait for the winxp config screen, and do all those fun steps in configuring your XP. So when that is all done, and you reboot your system, windows will start up again, and it SHOULD work, with all your data intact. Now just install all those drivers ex. video,sound w/e.

But before you do this, you should back up your HD, unless you do something you didn’t mean to do. Personally I never do it, but if you have valuable work, just take back it up and try it. I am pretty 95% sure this will work, becuase I had the same problem… Except I was using it with win2k. But should be around the same!

Good Luck, and let me know if it helps

Well problem is I bought this computer a few months ago and they didn’t give me an OS disk.

I can however run the HP System Backup thing which will leave all my data files, but will erase all program files…

I’m considering kicking the computer down the stairs… any ideas?

Argh,
then if you can, try to get an OS disc from somebody, becuase that is the only chance from deleting all your files.
I’m not sure on the HP back up, but we’ll see what comes up.

Ok so if I go into HP System Restore it allows me to try a WINDOWS XP RESTORE first, and when I do that I can boot into windows fine. I then tried to restart and it hung at the same place on reboot. It’s like I corrupted something when I didn’t shutdown properly and now for some reason I have to go into system restore just to start my computer.

Preferably from the top of the stairs for better results.

Anyway, do you remember the last major change you made to your computer that might make it do this? If not, the problem may very well be hardware. I’d take grinch’s advice and try to repair XP, there’s bound to be someone with a CD that you know.

UPDATES:

Thor… Yes a boot from the top of the stairs would give it the farthest trajectory and allow for most damage. Good call.

So I guess HP computers don’t come with the OS disks because they have this System Restore on the computer which basically acts like the disc… so I can reinstall, repair…

I used their restore from disk feature and it allowed me to get into windows. I uninstalled any software I had installed recently and rebooted.

Seems to be working now.

Glad to hear it.

yeah HP is weird like that - they make a partition on the hard drive just for their OS and application files…there is then a utility inside of windows that allows you to make cd’s of that image for restoration…

if you call up HP they will mail you the cds - one time a person called and they said the computer system was so new that they hadn’t made the backup set in cdroms for that model yet - however i’m sure you can be put on the list at least.

i’m glad to hear you got it up and working bro.

woohoo! Great man, glad everything is alright!

God!!!
i got a e-machine just because i thought they give ya os disk and ai got one of those but it comes in handy if my siblings decide to lock me off my comp or if i get too lazy to get rid of all 10 gigs of crap in my docs nice ot know ya got your comp working

Lots of companies give you OS disks. Also, lots of universities sell full copies of Win XP Professional for less than the normal cost. My mom can buy a copy for $5. (100% legal)

But a smarter thing to do is to actually build your PC, costs so much cheaper. I built mine for 400 and it’s worth 2k. Plus I got me OS boot discs :wink:

Or, get your parents to pay for them!

Oh well that is a really bad idea.
I mean buying a computer is so pointless. I built mine not becuase it’s cheaper, but just so I can learn. I mean I’ve done all those basics, build a computer, install an OS, partition an HD, learn a advanced application, etc