Well, I had my computer on yesterday, and woke up this morning to see that my monitor was in sleep mode because it didn't see that the CPU was on. I restarted the CPU figuring it was just having a weird hiccup, and BIOS shows up all dandy, Windows XP appears to load, and then I get the black screen with white letting telling me that there was a problem upon boot up, possibly caused by a hardware change. I haven't made any changes myself recently, though.
I have the choice to start normally, in safe mode, or from last known good configuration. Any of these options leads me back to this screen. Windows XP will appear to try to load, then the BIOS thing will load, and back to he black screen with white text. When the BIOS thing shows up, I'm allowed to hit F2 and F12 to load the boot menu and setup menu. They come up, but I don't know what to do from here.
A friend suggested I load my Windows installation disk, but I do not have one. The same friend told me my computer is probably in a coma just before it dies. Great…
It's a Windows XP OS 2, the computer's about 5-6 years old… 1 GB of RAM. I couldn't tell you the other vital information 'cause I can't load the computer to look it up.
Thanks for any help. I'm sure this'll be a mega challenge, eh?
Hello star6phoenix9,
Sorry to hear you're having problems.
Can you let me know the make and model number of your machine? That way I should be able to figure out what the rest of the specifications are.
Have you got a recent backup of all your important documents?
Has the machine been "knocked" recently?
Is the machine making any noises at startup? (Either from the speakers or from fans or hard drives).
Cheers,
Nahumi
I believe the make and model number would be Dell and Dimension 2400. If the latter sounds wrong, where would I find the model number on the CPU? It is a desktop, by the way.
I have not got a recent back-up of my files and such from my main 40GB harddrive. Many of them are on an external 1TB harddrive, and many on an internal 200GB harddrive. Any time I went to make a back-up point, my computer alerted me that it couldn't successfully do so. Last time I attempted this was ages ago, and I couldn't tell you what appeared to go wrong.
By "knocked", do you mean literally by my fist out of pure frustration with these damned machines these days? No, not yet. I've got so much going on and stressing me out right now, I've just settled into this calm mood that really doesn't let me get that angry. I'll go hit it if you think that might fix it. LOL. Otherwise, did you mean did I or someone accidently hit it? The CPU is on the ground under the desk, and kicking it is always a possibility from anyone who uses it besides myself since they are unfamiliar with the layout of my desk setup. Last person to use it was my father, and I can ask him if he hit it.
There is no noise from the speakers at start-up, and the fans and harddrive appear to behave normally as far as I can tell from the noises they make.
Thank you for your help!
"Knocked" could mean anything really. It might be worth asking your father if he noticed anything odd when he used the machine. Any information regarding a crash or other failure would be helpful.
The lack of a Windows Installation Disc is rather unfortunate. Have you tried looking for any other Recovery Disks? Did you make a Dell Recovery Disk when you first purchased the machine?
I'm going to ask him when he gets home from work any minute now. He was the last one to use it while it was still working.
I'm having the tech guy from my job come by tomorrow with a Windows XP Home Edition installation disk. Hopefully we can do something about this. I'll keep the thread updated with our progress, though so you can see what goes on.
Dad just walked in and said nothing unusual was happening with my computer. He said he simply went to the AT&T website too look something up about our mobile plan. I asked which browser did he use, and he said Internet Explorer. Ugh… I've been trying to train him to use Firefox, but clearly it's not working… Heh.
My computer has been giving me trouble for a while. I must just be bad at maintaining it… Either way, I don't have any recovery disks of any sort. I looked extensively last time my computer was bed-ridden, and having moved since then, I don't expect to find anything else. No recovery disk was made.
The main thing I want right now, though, is a few files from my C drive. After I can get those, completely starting anew would be fine.
Its a download of only about 100MB, so a broadband connection is advisable for the download… Puppy is an alternative operating system….. it does not need Windows to run, and the licence to use it is free of charge and comes included automatically. It is different in its interface from Windows, but sufficiently intuitive for most folks to use it successfully without problem.
B.) Burn the iso (that you have downloaded) to CD ROM as an "image"…it must be as an image, a copy will not work!……..Imgburn is good for this, available from here:
C.) Switch on your "original" computer and Set Bios to Boot from CD as first priority…on most Dells it's F2 to enter the Bios (set up) otherwise try F12, Esc or Del
NOTE you will need to press the appropriate key (to enter the Bios) immediately after power on.
Your hard drive should be next in priority followed by USB/network if the settings provide these options. Remember to save your altered settings in the Bios before exiting.
D.) With your external back up media plugged in to a USB port I.E. External USB hard drive, flash drive etc and the Linux Puppy CD ROM inserted into the CD drive, close down your machine and:
E.) Boot from the CD, you may get a message to "press any key to continue booting from CD" so allow this, Now follow the on-screen Linux Puppy prompts (remember don't install it) let it run in memory, it will be quite happy doing so, and will allow you access to your Hard drive so you can copy off to your external media anything you need. You will soon get used to Puppy and you'll find that you will be able to use the Internet and do most things that you want to do.
However as you need to back up your files, I suggest you concentrate on copying off your important stuff first.
Before you can reinstall XP using your work colleague's disk, you need to find the Microsoft sticker on your machine. This will have a 20 digit alpha-numeric product key. You need to make a note of that before you can try repairing or installing windows. I suggest trying to do a repair before re-installing XP though.
Just got home from work and am about to go to bed. This suggestion sounds like a life-saver to me, and I'll try it later today or possibly tomorrow, time permitting.
One question, though: the computer I'm on now is a friend's, and I don't know if it can burn CDs or DVDs at all. I'll found out later today, but in the event it is unable to burn, could I save the ISO to a jump drive and get BIOS to load from that? If so, what steps should I take in order to do this properly?
Thank you!
You could, but unfortunately with the way that Puppy Linux is distributed it still needs to be burnt onto a CD before it can be "installed" onto a USB Drive.
It is possible to use a different Linux distribution called Ubuntu. You'll need at least a 1GB USB Drive and the download will take a while. If you have that, I can talk you through downloading and installing Ubuntu on a USB drive instead.
Before you try that though, try looking on the back of your machine when it's on. Hopefully there should be four lights. If they are all green (not flashing), then your hardware should be fine. If they aren't, please take note of the particular light configuration and let me know what it is. This should allow me to troubleshoot your problems a little easier.
Furthermore, if you are able to backup your files and documents your machine should have a "Restore to Factory" setting. Once you backup your documents, restart your machine and press F11 as it boots up. If your machine has this feature installed you should be able to get your machine back to how it was when you first bought it.
The tech guy at my work has Ubuntu on a disk at his place and will be bringing it by tomorrow. Saves me a bit of trouble trying to figure out a way to burn it to disk, thankfully.
I just had a look for the lights on the back of my computer, and I found four small lights in a horizontal line, labeled A, B, C, and D. When I first pressed the power button at the front, they switched back and forth between green and orange, but once it got going, they all quickly settled on green, no flashing.
I've copied the files I needed to save to an external harddrive, but when I went to look for my bookmarks for Firefox, I was unable to find them in Ubuntu. Loading Firefox from the Ubuntu disk doesn't show my bookmarks. Where would these be so that I can copy them down?
Other than that, I am ready to fix the computer however you think is best.
EDIT: A quick Google search for the bookmarks question solved my problem and I was able to save them. Win.
Now I just need to fix up my computer. Though, I am worried that my secondary internal harddrive will be affected if I reset the computer to factory settings. Will there be a problem with that?
Your secondary drive should be untouched. If you're particularly worried about it you could always open up the case and unplug the hard drive.
The first thing we'll try is Dell's inbuilt factory restore feature:
1. Boot up your machine. 2. Press the "Ctrl" and then the "F11" keys. 3. Release both keys at the same time 4. If all goes well the "Dell PC Restore by Symantec" screen should show up. 5. Follow the on-screen instructions to Restore your machine.
You might have to try the first two steps a few times to get the screen to come up.
Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to back up the 200GB harddrive as well. I'll probably not be able to finish that before I go into work tonight, but I will complete it tomorrow and hopefully be able to try your suggestion then as well. I'll let you know where I am in progress tomorrow evening.
Well, you might get a laugh out of this…
So, I go to try your latest suggestion after having everything I need backed up. I press Ctrl, then F11, then release them at the same time. It took me a couple of tries to get the computer to respond to the commands, but once it finally did, it merely told me that there was a keyboard error. Wonderful, now my computer's turned against me and suddenly enjoys its new-found vegetative state. Well, I try the key commands a couple more times, and I keep getting "Keyboard error". After that screen, it'd just go back to the black screen with white font asking me how I'd like to boot the computer. I said "F*** it" and hit enter with "Start Windows Normally" highlighted just to see what'd happen.
Well, to my surprise, it booted up just fine. I cocked my head to the side, and said, "REALLY?" out loud. After a good week and a half of pouting for my computer's coma, it just boots up like it just got back from holiday. I turned it off, plugged everything back in, and had another boot just to make sure it wasn't messing with me (I'm really starting to think it's sentient). Just fine, and I'm talking to you now from my working Windows XP Dell computer. Fabalish.
The only thing I did, that I can think of, that'd impact the booting of the computer into Windows was clean out some of the dust inside of the CPU when my coworker and I tried to unhook the additional internal harddrive. I don't have a can of air, so I just gave a few dozen blows to it. I'm going to get a can of compressed air tomorrow and give the insides a good blasting.
Just to make sure everything really is hunky-dory, here are the specs and a hijackthis report.
Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 2
Intel ®
Celeron ® CPU 2.40GHz
2.39GHz, 1.00GB of RAM
