PC won't boot up!!

[lastminute]

My daughters pc has suddenly refused to 'start up'....it goes round in circles asking to choose one of the options...ie - Safe Mode or Command Prompt' etc and when chosen reboots to the same screen!!!

Any advice please.

Gerry

 

[nev]

does it beep numerous times? some pc's have self diagnostics on boot and beep so many times to indicate whats wrong (faulty ram etc) if so then do a google for (make of pc) beep codes.

 

[Harbo]

Did she make a boot up disc or got the original software?


Rod

 

[Ian down london way]

If could be a hard drive problem, or something else.
If its the hard drive, and just part of the drive is corrupt (which does happen) - its worth drying to boot your machine using bootable removable media, either a memory stick or more usually a CD. if you've not prepared one in the past (a so called 'rescue disc', then you can download (on another machine) a free (and legal) bootable CD image, which you then blow to a CD. There are lots of Linux "distros" which provide that. Once up and running, although it may well look very unfamiliar, you are likely to be able to retrieve your date from the disc, even if other parts of the disc are corrupt.
It won't repair your machine, but it can help you save your data.
If this is something you want to do, I'll find the URL of a decent linux you can try downloading, but as I said you will have to download and create the media on another machine.

 

[Tom K]

No BSOD? Open the case and check everything is seated its usually the hard drive died once had similar was a ribbon cable.

 

[Elapid]

My old computer would do this bash f8 during start up and select last known configuration. Might not work but worth a try.

 

[misterfish]

As you are getting the safe mode or command prompt menu the computer is trying to boot into Windows but failing and then restarting. I'd use the free to download Hirens BootCD as this contains a lot of freeware/shareware utilities that will allow checking of the hardware and the windows installation. Also it contains anti-virus software.

As its name implies it is a bootable CD that doesn't need a working operating system - you/she'll need to use another computer to download and burn the CD, though it may be possible to indtall it on a USB memory stick and use that if the sick PC will boot from USB devices.

Alternatively, if you have the original Windows disk you can boot from that and then select the repair option, though this often doesn't solve the problem for me and I end up doing a disk reformat and Windows reinstall. If you still have important data on the computer then you don't want to format the disk unless absolutely necessary - in this case you may be able to do a windows reinstall without a format.

Misterfish

 

[lastminute]

Thanks everyone...will try downloading the recommended software and give it a try.

 

[Ian down london way]

How did you get on??

 

[lastminute]

Thanks everyone...ended up formatting the hdd...was told a probable download update caused the problem...now working better than ever.

 

[Robbo3]

Once the laptop is setup & software installed, try a free clone/image programme so that if ever needed you can revert to how it is now. I used to format & re-install XP fairly regularly but restoring an image is much quicker.

Easus Disk Copy
- http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/index.htm

Clonezilla
- http://clonezilla.org

Regards
Robbo