HELP? Can Not Start windows , harware or configuration problem ~

[Chuck Wintle]

over the phone I directed him to do just that- insert the windows XP disk and press R after all the set up files have gone through- not even responding to that- it's as if it doesn't recognize the disk- all this is telling me between the Red dot on the hard drive indicator and not booting from the CD drive is that we have a crash on our hands- unfortunately. this was my old SONY Pentium III 1000 - great machine and it is 9 years old - with a TV card /DVD burner - 2 bays - I just sold it to him 2 weeks ago for 200 and I feel bad that this happened to him- but ka-ka happens - then again he had no virus protection at all- nothing ~ and he was going all over the place on the net- and he called me and told me that he was having some funny things happening to his computer. I told him from the beginning to get some ant virus/spam - the hole nine yards-. So I went with him and got "Spy doctor" the full suite and it found 149 infections and several "Trojans" labeled severe- now it removed them - but I was told that these viruses or "Trojans" can even cause hard drive failure- is this true?
Brian

The trojans/viruses can mess up windows to the point that it will no longer boot but not to the point of ruining the drive, in my experience. If the drive is still good then it can be zero filled, formatted and reinstalled with windows.

Its more likely the drive has failed or the BIOS is messed up. It could also be a motherboard failure or even the CPU. Can your friend access the BIOS at all? What kind of drive is it?

[Dave Sinkus]

So you at least have a somewhat working BIOS on the MotherBoard.

There are usually categories like Diagnostics....basic is this device talking or not. You could check the hard drive that way.

A category for boot sequence.....if you are going to have to boot from CD, I would change the sequence to check the CD-ROM drive first. save, then power off/on.

If you get to where it can boot from the CD, you can start the repair process.
Hope this helps.

[David Epperson]

Almost sounds familiar. If he's running Panda as a firewall, My bet would be that he allowed Microsoft to install updates to XP. I unfortunatly found out that this can do some serious FAT corruption. I also had to get another hard drive and reinstall Windows on it. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing physically wrong with the original drive. Other that it will not boot and there are some sectors "Access Denied", but all the data is still there - I've recovered some of it. And as soon as I can find an inexpensive way (recovery program) to drag the "above 640Meg" files off of it I'll reformat to run windows as the primary again.
Panda as a firewall and XP have issues.

Now if I could only find the original program discs for my wifes Family Tree Maker....

[Brian Weick]

what is he looking for - is there a place for restore default values

[Chuck Wintle]

Almost sounds familiar. If he's running Panda as a firewall, My bet would be that he allowed Microsoft to install updates to XP. I unfortunatly found out that this can do some serious FAT corruption. I also had to get another hard drive and reinstall Windows on it. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing physically wrong with the original drive. Other that it will not boot and there are some sectors "Access Denied", but all the data is still there - I've recovered some of it. And as soon as I can find an inexpensive way (recovery program) to drag the "above 640Meg" files off of it I'll reformat to run windows as the primary again.
Panda as a firewall and XP have issues.

Now if I could only find the original program discs for my wifes Family Tree Maker....

David,
Try the free program "Test Disk"(google that). I have used it in the past and it bailed me out. Its easy to use to.

[Chuck Wintle]

what is he looking for - is there a place for restore default values

Brian,
In the BIOS there should be a selection to set the boot order so that he can boot from the Windows CD. also there is a place that can be checked to to find out if the computer BIOS recognizes the hard drive. At the same time, in the BIOS, he can verify the voltages from the power supply( a good idea).

[Dave Sinkus]

Is there anything referencing the sequence it will boot from Hard Drive, CD, Floppy?

Overall there is typically a restore to defaults in there somewhere.

Also try diagnostics. There may be a quick test to see if the hard drive is alive.


P.S. This is exciting......it's like doing an apendectomy over a cell phone

I'm still betting that it is a vacuum tube or flux capacitor failure

[Brian Weick]

do you know

[Chuck Wintle]

do you know

There is no diagnostics section in the BIOS.

[Brian Weick]

of items he has disabled in the bios set up utility, ???

[Dave Sinkus]

disabled items......the key items to check are for hard drives/storage devices, cd-rom, etc.....make sure they are enabled.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Put a DOS bootable floppy in the A drive and take a look at the system files.

Maybe the MBR is kerflooey.

[David G Baker]

Brian,
I had the same thing happen to me one month to the day after I upgraded to Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 7. I spent several days on another computer researching the Internet for a fix for the problem and I tried everything to access my other computer and did not have any luck. I formated my hard drive, installed all of my software and re-installed IE7 not knowing that it caused the problem. One week later the same thing happened. This started me thinking, what was the last thing I had added or changed on my computer, it turned out that IE7 was the last change I had made. Formated my hard drive again installed all of my software and installed an older version or Internet Explorer and haven't had any problem since.
I don't know if this is your friends problem but the symptoms you described were the same as mine.

[Brian Weick]

for errors if I can't get to windows- write now it tries for a breif moment but then loops back to the options fo rsafe mode- I want to run checkdisk how do I do that- i am here with his pc write now- thanks guys- waiting your feedback - somthing is corrupted on his hard drive.- it is working by the way
Brian

[Dave Sinkus]

chkdsk.....

Also, if you can bring it up in Safe mode.......you should be able to put the CD in and try to run the setup exec on that CD.

so far so good.....it does not appear to be hardware