Urgent help needed-complete crash!

silverfoxdude

Hi

Hope someone can help, I dont know if this is a contributer factor, but yesterday we changed over from BT to Bulldog, and about 3 hours later, the pc turned itself off.

When trying to boot it up again, it gives this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\vgaoem.fon


Can you help please???

TIA

p.s I dont have a Windows XP disk as it all came on the computer when I bought it 3 years ago

espresso

See this link for more info.

:rudolf:

silverfoxdude

Thanks expresso, I have had a look at that but dont have the disk required.

Browntoa

can you get the PC into safe mode ??

see here

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2001052409420406?OpenDocument&src=sec_doc_nam

then go back to a restore point before yesterday

see here how to use restore

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q306084

silverfoxdude

Have tried to get into safe mode, but it asks for an administrator password, and OH doesnt know what that is. I dont know if it was set at the manufacturers or he has?

Browntoa

you would have set it, the default is no password

silverfoxdude

how do i do that? as I have tried some words already, nothing is saving. I have found a floppy disk that OH made which could be the rescue disk

Browntoa

Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (v050303)

Petter Nordahl-Hagen has written a Windows NT/2000/XP offline password editor:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd

• This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 system, by modifying the encrypted password in the registry's SAM file.
  
• You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
  
• It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppy disk or CD. The boot-disk includes stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.
  
• Works with syskey (no need to turn it off, but you can if you have lost the key)
  
• Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!

silverfoxdude

Thanks Browntoa, I've completely re-installed it from floppy. Lost everything, but its the easiest option.

Thank you

Browntoa

it,s worth getting yourself a "Knoppix" disk from ebay for about £2 and putting it away for the future, at least you can boot to that and retrieve stuff

charlieheard

If you have broadband, you can download Knoppix for free and burn youself a bootbale CD. I used it when my PC crashed in a similar way to this (turned out to be a corrupt file system, so I had to reinstall Windows onto a new disk)

I was to find a presentation for SWMBO and write it onto a CD within Knoppix. It was wierd to see the PC booting up into another operating system, though