The Computer is Broken. Seems to be Circling the Drain in a Loop. TECH PING LIST SUPERSTARS

03.02.08 | chickensoup

[Chickensoup]

Help!

Came home last night. Turned on the trusty computer and up came a long message, white on black saying: We apologize for the inconvience but Windows did not start successflly... with several option to start.

None of them work.

It then loops to the windows xp screen

Then to an ad for the mainboard

then to a scan devices screen

then to some sort of listing

This morning there was a listing that on each line named had a number of the programs I run at the end of each line. It has not come up this time.

The hard disk comes on for the main board screen and the listing screen

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Sounds as if your disk drive is hosed.

[Chickensoup]

What is a cmos battery?

[top 2 toe red]

Mine is doing almost the same thing...happened yesterday afternoon.

I went into safe mode, couldn't locate the problem...then restored to an earlier date, that worked for awhile, then problem started all over.

Finally, located that it seems to be my comcast connection. I don't know if it is the comcast receiver [unplugged and reset it several times] that is giving me the problem or if it is a comcast overall thing.

The TV lost it's signal a couple of times in this same timeframe and the laptop lost it's connection, too. [although, at no time did the laptop have either that dreaded black or blue screen.]

Do you by chance have comcast, too?

[Hacklehead]

sounds like a software problem. Is it true that you cannot get into safe mode?

[Chickensoup]

It is a tiger direct Systemax AMD mother board 64

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

It sounds to me like you picked up a virus - I got one last week that destroyed a 200BB hard drive (for XP but not Linux).

I ended up catching the virus before it got to my C drive.

[mkmensinger]

Try powering up, then hit the F8 key about once a second. That may get you into safe mode.

[rocksblues]

After reading this I suggest that you pull your hard drive and take it to somebody that can copy files off of it without having to boot it.

[Chickensoup]

Wont accept the command

[txzman]

CMOS battery is about the size of a quarter, silvery metal, round that pops into a holder on the motherboard. Keeps your initial boot up settings in memory to sort of jump start the computer with info on how it is setup to run.

[Chickensoup]

just found it

[Chickensoup]

You do have a recovery CD, yes?

Would that be my xp pro disc?

[Chickensoup]

nothing

[Chickensoup]

True

[the invisib1e hand]

boot from disk and run "r" for repair and then chkdsk /r to do a disk repair.

Do NOT reformat the drive.

In the worst case, you'll have to buy a hard drive. Once that's installed, you can connect your old hard drive by USB and copy the relevant data files, after you've scanned them for viruses as someone else has already pointed out.

[firewalk]

here’s a bttt for help

[papasmurf]

your last , best hope would be the recovery CD.

Recovery disks usually re-format your hard drive. That means, they wipe it clean, and away goes data, down the drain.

As Viking2002 said...it's your last hope to reuse your PC.

Still waiting for you to gather the above asked for information..."beeps", "motherboard model", etc.

Using a "live" CD, from any Linux distribution is better than using a recovery cd, in that, you will be able to copy off your data.
You could also choose to install Linux by resizing yur partition, and using the available space, without losing your data.
You could also do a "side by side" installation of XP, without losing your data.

Good luck!

[Viking2002]

It would be the restore CD that came with the PC. If not, you can use your OEM XP CD, and reinstall Windows. Do not reformat the drive, or all of your saved documents, Internet shortcuts, etc. will go bye-bye. Your registry will be overwritten, so you'll have to reinstall several programs, but it beats losing everything on there.

[Chickensoup]

Try powering up, then hit the F8 key about once a second. That may get you into safe mode.

did it. new screen with lots of boot options.

The ones previously mentionded plus
Enable boot logging
enagle VGA mode
last known good config
degugging mode
diable auto restart on system failure

Start windows normally
reboot
returen ot OS choices menue

[Slump Tester]

It sounds to me like it's loading something that's blowing you out. Get a hold of or get on another box and download "Hiren's Boot CD" or a Linux boot cd.

Both will have stuff on them to help you clean up the boot process.