PC won't boot

windym_2

Hi,

My next door neighbours computer won't boot up. It gets to a screen which says 'start in safe mode or start windows normally'. No matter which of these you select, neither boots the matchine, it just goes to the black windows screen with the green progress squares under the MS log.

He runs MS Vista. Even inserting the recovery disc doesn't help as the PC doesn't even get that far.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BritBrat

Do you get the "last known good" option?

Try that.

windym_2

No. Turn on, get 'start in safe mode or start windows normally'. Select either and computer goes to black screen with MS logo and green squares at bottom. Hangs forever and a day.

BritBrat

OK have a look at this, although I have not used it myself I do know others that have.

Recovering the Vista Bootloader using EasyBCD 1.7.2.

Not sure how you will do it if you cant get into anything thou.

Maybe the EasyBCD is a bootable disk, but make sure you choose the right drive letter for the VISTA system if it is.

PhilCo_2

I had a problem with Vista this morning, it didn't get to the login screen and I was just left staring at a black screen. If you google "vista black screen login" you quickly find that it's a common problem with Vista. I got around it by pressing F8 on bootup which should take you to a screen offering all the Safe mode options etc. The first option for me was Repair. Select this and on the program that runs select Restore and pick a restore file from a few days previous when the computer was known to work. After it has restored it should boot okay. My last restore point was yesterday and had been created due to a Windows update so assume it must have gone wrong.

BritBrat

So it could be a windows update causing the problem.

windym_2

It seems it is Antivirus 2009 which is causing the problem. However, I cannot even boot into safe mode for him. Any suggestions? As I cannot even start at removing it unless I can boot at least into safe.

esbo

windym wrote: »

It seems it is Antivirus 2009 which is causing the problem. However, I cannot even boot into safe mode for him. Any suggestions? As I cannot even start at removing it unless I can boot at least into safe.

I remember making a recovery CD when I got my PC, I have never used it but
I think I could boot up from it if necessary do you have one of those you could
try?

I guess you could possibly make a recovery CD on your PC and try that on our neighbours?
Not sure if that would work as I think all the hardware drivers would be wrong.
However it can't do any harm.

Another possibility is to take the hard drive out of the PC and put it
in your PC as a slave drive, you would then be able to run things like
check disk on it

esbo

If it is Antivirus 2009 which is causing the problem then if you can get the drive onto
your PC you could rename the folder it is in so it can't find it, and see what happens?

esbo

windym wrote: »

Hi,

My next door neighbours computer won't boot up. It gets to a screen which says 'start in safe mode or start windows normally'. No matter which of these you select, neither boots the matchine, it just goes to the black windows screen with the green progress squares under the MS log.

He runs MS Vista. Even inserting the recovery disc doesn't help as the PC doesn't even get that far.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Somewaht spookily I had exactly the same problem with my computer soon afterwards.
What happened was I tried to install a new graphics card on my machine and
when I booted up I had the same problem!!
Anyway I asked a very goood techy on the microsoft newsgroups (Paul) and he
suggested I had knocked a cable loose whilst installing the card.
Anyway I disconnected a few components and checked that everything was
seated securely, ie connections and RAM. I also gave it a bit of a hoover out,
but I did that cardfully as if you get too close it can generate static which might damage a component.
Anyway when I put it all back togeather again it booted up successfully!!
(well I still had to install the graphics card software, but it cured the main problem).

So...it could well be more of a hardware problem rather than a software problem.
Also remove all USB conections you do not need. In fact you really only need
the keyboard and monitor connected (and power obviously when you want to boot).

It seems it cannot access the hard drive or something like that so it might be cabling
or the harddrive is dead.

Actually it seems your computer got futher than mine, mine never got to the windows
screen, so it seems the machine is physically OK. So it seems more of a software
issue perhaps?

Shouldit not boot frm the recovery disk?