Posted on 05/18/2004 8:51:02 PM PDT by whatevergurl
Help!
HI, i'm a poor college student with a broke computer. I bought a HP Pavilion 532W IBM type computer, running windows XP. Today I was having problems with the computer, every time I booted up I got an error stating "could not load image.dll" or something like that. So in my wisdom i tried to fix the problem by going back to various system restore points. I went all the way back to some date in feb. When the computer rebooted, windows would not load at all and i got an error message to that effect. Everytime i retried, i got the same error message. I tried to go to safe mode, but this seems difficult to do. Now i'm getting "windows could not start up because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system 32\ntaskrnl.exe" Unfortunately, the computer was very cheap and came only with the s/w loaded. I didn't get any cd roms with the package. So now I'm getting various error messages, the latest of which is "system is not fully installed, please run setup again." The computer never came with disks to reinstall and now my computer is dead.
Ack.
Someone is going to ask you if you are logged in. What will be your answer?
Fatal Mistake #1 HP.
ok i'll bite
1how did you get online then
2 do you have legal copy of xp
3 ever thought about mac
seems to me your boot.ini is corrupted. You need to get a full copy of XP and run repair from it.
To be a little nicer...You only chance at this point is to fine someone who knows a lot more than you do and get them to help you out. With the extent of your problems...No one is likely going to be able to help you online.
Buy a copy of XP and install it.
sorry, i didn't answer this in my post. I'm using my Dad's computer...mine is broken right next to me. It was my dad's (Oldcorps) idea to ask for advice on freerepublic...he said he's done it a few times and some good guys always help him with sound technical advice.
HP: Hunka Poo
You're going to need a pro.
Could be some virus has infected a driver. Any strange reports from your Norton Semantec or similar security program?
also if you makes you feel any better i am running xp
and have had various failures...
its sort of part of the charm ... sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt...
I'm fairly certain hp will send you a restore cd. you'll have to call their customer service and if your warranty is expired you'll have to purchase a service contract which prob isn't that expensive. Their customer service sucks but it can be done.
This seems to call for a system reload. Since you don't have the disks, your choices are: a) get them from somewhere or b) get some other disks (Linux is within your budget - free - but it's a very different animal from Windows).
I'm running ME, so I can't help you with your problem.
It's not that your machine is "cheap". If it'll make you feel better, I'm running a little XG843, the cheapest thing they made at the time, (but it had one and I just had to have a CD burner).
HP stopped shipping recovery discs when they went with bundling XP, from low end to high end systems. If memory serves, they're less than 25 bucks, though.
Start taking out startup programs until you find the one causing the problem.
I just read this on the internet, not sure if it will work with XP but if you can load dos, but if you can maybe in the command prompt type "run fdisk /mbr" and it should hopefully repair your corrupted boot.ini file.
I have an HP Media Center PC and it came with a Recovery Partition with which you can create recovery cds/dvds. You can also recover directly from that partition. On my PC, you press F12 while booting to get to the recovery menu. This will bring your computer back to the factory configuration.
I avoid this problem by regularly imaging my C drive with Norton Ghost. Then when my C drive is corrupted or a bad install happens, I restore the latest image and everything is back to normal.
If it is as bad as sounds, then your best bet is to reinstall Windows. System Restore doesn't always fix the problem but erasing the hard drive and then reinstalling the operating system will clear any and every software bug.
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