Computer not booting up

markymark2901

A friend's PC is refusing to boot up. Windows XP. When it is swicthed on it gets as far as the "boot screen" where it says press F2 to enter boot menu but goes no further ....

What can I do ? ... He didn't make himself a boot disc !! ... I can lend him my XP discs to reinstall XP but he doesn't want to wipr the hard disc owing to data loss.

Any suggestions ?

Browntoa

sounds like a hard disk problem

you can do a Reapir install of XP from your CD which should not lose data

Browntoa

or download this Linux Boot CD

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

boot from that and copy his data to a USB drive or a DVD/CD

then reinstall XP

PeterPerfect

Depends on what you call data loss. If it is any other programs e.g. Office, then these too would need to be re-installed. What options are present on the boot menu. Is the hard disk actually listed?

PeterPerfect

As a suggestion for the future, I partition my hard disk into two drives c: and d: I keep all data and some applications on d: whilst my c: drive is my OS, which if anything goes wrong I can re-install/format etc the C: drive without effecting the d: drive

[Deleted User]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=boot+cd&btnG=Search&meta=

markymark2901

Browntoa wrote: »

sounds like a hard disk problem

you can do a Reapir install of XP from your CD which should not lose data

How does he go about doing this ? Especially as his PC doesn't boot up ?

Jaffa.

Sounds like a power suply problem to me.

markymark2901

Jaffa. wrote: »

Sounds like a power suply problem to me.

Nope. does switch on .... do the discs automatically run when they are put in ? ... how do i access the repair part of the discs ?

Browntoa

hit F2 as it's the only option and make sure that the "boot order" is set to CD first and it will boot from the CD when you turn it back on

this is how to do a repair

click here

markymark2901

That's brill. It seems that this link is just what he needs by the number of "excellent"s I can hear coming from him !!!