Desktop won't boot

Crispy_Ambulance

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

But if you leave it for a few minutes after you get this screenful of gibberish, what happens then? That's actually normal for safe mode as part of the booting up process. All the entries should begin with C:/

If it does that, wait for a few minutes to see if it completes going into safe mode.

No joy, I'm afraid. After the gibberish, it went back to the screen telling me there was a problem and asking me to select "start windows normally" or "previous safe configuration" etc - none of which worked.

Money_Grabber13579

Crispy_Ambulance wrote: »

No joy, I'm afraid. After the gibberish, it went back to the screen telling me there was a problem and asking me to select "start windows normally" or "previous safe configuration" etc - none of which worked.

Crispy_Ambulance wrote: »

Ahh, it was a dumb question - I've found the sticker. So if I can borrow an XP installation disk, I can reboot?

But what happens to all my data?

Unfortunately, if you restore with a Windows disc, you will lose all your data and it is essentially a reformat. There might be an option to save files, but a previous poster suggests that it doesn't work. (I personally don't know as I've never had to go that far!)

Crispy_Ambulance

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

Unfortunately, if you restore with a Windows disc, you will lose all your data and it is essentially a reformat. There might be an option to save files, but a previous poster suggests that it doesn't work. (I personally don't know as I've never had to go that far!)

OK. If I take it to a computer repair person, is it likely they will be able to save the data?

Money_Grabber13579

Crispy_Ambulance wrote: »

OK. If I take it to a computer repair person, is it likely they will be able to save the data?

If you know a good one, then it's likely something could be salvaged. PC World does not count as a good one as they'd just do as good a job as you could do at home i.e. wipe it and start again!

Once you get it sorted, I'd recommend you get an external hard drive and make a regular back up. Or back up online.

Crispy_Ambulance

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

If you know a good one, then it's likely something could be salvaged. PC World does not count as a good one as they'd just do as good a job as you could do at home i.e. wipe it and start again!

Once you get it sorted, I'd recommend you get an external hard drive and make a regular back up. Or back up online.

Thanks - I have a lot of stuff backed up, but typically, hadn't backed up recently. I am now going to bang my head hard on a wall.

A spot of googling has suggested downloading PC Linux OS and trying to salvage the data that way. I feel a bit inadequate trying to do that, but presumably I can't make things any worse?

Money_Grabber13579

Ah, yes, surprised that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet! Personally, I don't know what to do in that case, as I've never booted with Linux but I'll look for some info on that!

Money_Grabber13579

This thread might help. From post 2 onwards, there's a bit about booting using a Linux live disc.

closed

Buy a usb HD caddy, attach to a working pc, salvage your data, reinstall xp.

Crispy_Ambulance

closed wrote: »

Buy a usb HD caddy, attach to a working pc, salvage your data, reinstall xp.

Sorry to sound at bit dim - could you give me a bit more detail about how I do all that?

closed

Find out if the drive is sata or ide. Buy either a suitable usb caddy or usb to ide/sata cable, put the hard drive in the caddy, or attach to the cable, attach other end to usb port on a working pc, the drive should appear as another drive letter, copy your data off.

Then put the drive back into the original pc, and either borrow an xp disk and reinstall, or if the pc is branded, it may have a recovery partition to put it back to factory defaults.

There are other possibilities, linux live cd, bart pe, etc, repair using an xp cd, but this is the method that will be used by any pc tech/repair shop, cos it's the easiest to do, just need a caddy.

This all assumes the disk is physically ok, from what you've said sofar, there is no evidence that it's on it's way out, just got a corruption that needs resolving.

Plenty of guides on the web on how to do all the above.

When it's back up and working, backup using imaging software, it makes things much easier when things go wrong.