Dell Inspiron 8600 Cant Get Into Windows XP

michele16

Since yesterday my daughters Dell laptop wont log into Windows XP. The screen starts by saying " We apologise for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully"....

Have tried going into safemode but nothing seems to be working. Can anyone help? Not really sure what I am doing and its doing my head in. Is this caused by a virus? It keeps reverting to the boot menu. Don't think I have a Windows XP repair disk either.

debitcardmayhem

michele16 wrote: »

Since yesterday my daughters Dell laptop wont log into Windows XP. The screen starts by saying " We apologise for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully"....

Have tried going into safemode but nothing seems to be working. Can anyone help? Not really sure what I am doing and its doing my head in. Is this caused by a virus? It keeps reverting to the boot menu. Don't think I have a Windows XP repair disk either.

Have you used the option to "Use last Known Good Configuration" that will hopefully use system restore (not factory restore, and should not delete your files) and it may let you in. If not we(royal we, guys :cool:), can try other options

michele16

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Have you used the option to "Use last Known Good Configuration" that will hopefully use system restore (not factory restore, and should not delete your files) and it may let you in. If not we(royal we, guys :cool:), can try other options

Thanks for that and yes have tried all the options but nothing seems to work. Tried the safe mode on my main desktop and everything works fine. So the safe mode (and it seems everything else) is not working.

Browntoa

reboot, when you see the Dell splash screen at bootup, then Press CTRL + F11.

see if you have a recovery partition

debitcardmayhem

Browntoa wrote: »

reboot, when you see the Dell splash screen at bootup, then Press CTRL + F11.

see if you have a recovery partition

Saved me googling the option for Dell tx Brownt, however I can't remember if Dells REcovery has a repair option .

Browntoa

no , think its destructive only (lose all their data)

not sure these have restore though

other option is to buy a DELL Xp CD from ebay (must be a Dell cd...) and do a repair

debitcardmayhem

dell.mannn wrote: »

see this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307852

Look back above, OP has tried that (as suggested) and it does not work.

debitcardmayhem

Michele you could do with an Xp repair disc , when I get hold of my Home Pc I will see if I can find a link to one. However it may to try restarting the lappy with nothing i.e. USB keys, SD cards or anything external to it, including CDs/DVD's. Also did you get any help with the Dell Diagnostics (rather than the Restore partition) I think it may be a possible it could be a disk error but that is speculation of course.

Richie-from-the-Boro

How old ? if 2006 ( + ) it should have an F11 Restore facility, if 2006 (-) or less you are going to have to get a Symantech Ghost direct from DELL themselves also installed via F11.

I suspect because your on XP not Vista its older than 5 years, they were released in 2003, either way get in and get your important stuff copied off or you are going to loose it !

If you manage to get in here's your drivers

michele16

Browntoa wrote: »

reboot, when you see the Dell splash screen at bootup, then Press CTRL + F11.

see if you have a recovery partition

Thanks for that will try tomorrow - too tired now. Will let you know if any success.

dispossessed

One of the Boot Options should be to start a "Command Prompt". This often works where/when Safe Mode fails.

If you have this option select it and then type "chkdsk" (without quotes) and press enter.

Trevor