PC won't boot (probably because I switched off power too soon!)

davetrousers

Morning all, I have a problem with my computer!

I was using my PC last night (XP sp3) but when I shut it down I was in a hurry and turned of the power sockets at the wall before the computer had shut down, now it will not boot up.

It gives the options of Booting up in safe mode, Last known good configuration, start normally etc. but alas none of these work. If I select normally or Last known good then it gets as far as the windows logo (on a black screen) with a status bar underneath, but then just goes to a black screen. If I select Safe mode then it scrolls through a load of text (in DOS iyswim) where it says stuff like Verifying DMA Pool but then never goes any further!

Can any of you offer any advice please? But I am at work atm so won't be able to try anything till this evening.

If it comes to it I'll have to buy a new HDD and reinstall XP onto that, and use my current HDD as a secondary drive.

Thanks

JasX

Is all your data backed up somewhere? if not and you have access to a second PC would be sensible hooking the hard disk up to it to retreive your data

If you have an xp disk the easiest thing to try would be popping the disk in and opting to 'repair' the current installation, that should have a go at fixing it and preserve your data.

if you 'must' force your pc to shutdown quickly a slightly less damaging (but still quite harsh) method is to hold the power button down for 5 seconds.

Browntoa

needs to be the same version of XP on the CD for a repair , IE Dell xp for Dell , OEM cd for OEM install or your own original CD if you installed it

JasX

Browntoa wrote: »

needs to be the same version of XP on the CD for a repair , IE Dell xp for Dell , OEM cd for OEM install or your own original CD if you installed it

Are you sure? don't have direct experience of mis-matching versions, I was under the impression service packs were important and you risked reverting and needing to reinstall service packs and updates
(preferable manually downloaded via another PC so you're doesn't get killed connecting to the internet without the latest service pack)

OEM vs RETAIL shouldn;t matter for an inplace repair or does is mess with activation?

hopefully OP has the correct disk or can download one in any case

notbritishgas

Hi Dave
Many years ago I did the same as you and switched off the mains to the computer whilst the hard drive was still working merrily away trying to shut down.
The result was some damaged sectors on the hard drive causing the computer to run very very slowly ( I mean about 1 hr to boot up).
Eventually I did manage to run " chkdisk" which took about 15 hours! and it found the damage and cleverly moved what data it could onto undamaged sectors and hey presto panic over.

Little_Miss_Uni-Debt

Sounds like the boot partition/ record is the part of the hdd that is corrupt so if he runs chkdsk this prob wouldn't help. I know chkdsk just marks sectors as bad and refuses to read them.

Best bet is to buy an external HDD caddy/enclosure then plug it into another computer as a USB drive.

If you're not fussed about files/docs - just re-install XP / run recovery disk.

davetrousers

It's looking likely that I'll buy a new HDD drive then, and install XP onto that, and use the current drive as a secondary drive.