Laptop Broke what now

sjtaylor_1999

Hi All,

Our laptop stopped working, i was updating some drivers and it crashed now it wont start up, i have tried safe mode and last known good configartion. It still wont load windows. I gave up and thought i would install windows xp again from cd. It appears i cant do this either, i choose the option to boot from cd windows starts to install and then just sits in one place. What can i do now ?

mikegahan

I had this problem with an old laptop. I did not have the installation disks to restore windows. What I did is install a linux system on it. There are many alternatives to Windows. I used one called mepis 7.0. How you can get it is
search on Ebid or Ebay. There are people selling the installation discs for a couple of quid. If you look on Ebid there is a guy there, screen name "meddling Monk" who I have found helpful; he sold me the mepis disc. It does take a bit of knowledge to do it, but not that much. The thing with linux is that you will be able to use the internet, email etc but you will have problems using it for games etc as most are Windows based.

shadowdragon

when you say it wont start whats the screen doing when it stops responding?

On the install xp bit how far does it get before it dies?

sjtaylor_1999

Hi, thanks for your help

shadowdragon wrote: »

when you say it wont start whats the screen doing when it stops responding?

It gets past the bios type screens gets as far as the windows xp logo and the loading bar that just keeps trying to load. There is no cursor at this point. the bar just keeps scrolling and scrolling across.

On the install xp bit how far does it get before it dies?

it goes to blue screen for windows setup, then loads files (looks like drivers etc) appears to finish that then stays on the same blue screen with the same grey bar on the bottom that stays on setup is starting windows. No matter how long you leave it, it wont get any further.

any ideas

thanks steve

culpepper

have you formatted the drive? We had that problem with one of our pc's and it would only continue the install on a newly formatted drive. No idea why but at least it got it back on in the end.

shadowdragon

worth doing what culpepper said, or run chkdsk (checkdisk) from a dos box before windows starts, that may fix any phisical errors on your harddrive.

Also is your xp/recovery disk in good condition, I had a problem reinstalling xp and it was because my xp disk was damaged and that got so far and hung the system.

sjtaylor_1999

Hi thanks for the adcice,

The disk is in good condition, have tried a spare as well so same problem.

How would i run check disk, dont know much about dos or how to get to it. I dont have a floppy disk drive.

How would i format would i need to get to DOS first ?


thank you both for your help and advice