Please Help! PC won't work at all!

LouBlue

I can't get onto it at all so am using OH's laptop at the mo which is very old and is on a 3g card and is extremely slow so please bear with me.

PC froze last night, it wouldn't let me do anything so I had to turn it off without shutting it down properly. I have Windows XP.

I turned it back on to a screen that said

We apologise for the inconvenience but Windows did not shut successfully etc.....

It then gives me options

Start Windows normally
Last Known Good Configuration
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with command prompt

I have tried all the options and it takes me back to above instructions every time.

I then tried F11 Recovery, but didn't pursue it as it said 'you will lose all data to User Partition if you Continue?

So I panicked and didn't continue. Ii have no back up in place...yes I know....it was on my list of things To Do this week!!!


What does anyone suggest in a non techie way, apart from me having to call someone in, which I have done before with a previous pc at £65 an hour and they still couldn't fix it......:mad:

Browntoa

do you have an XP CD ?? or borrow an XP CD

is so you can do a repair and keep your data

LouBlue

Browntoa wrote: »

do you have an XP CD ?? or borrow an XP CD

is so you can do a repair and keep your data

I don't think so. Where would I get one of those?

What data would be lost if I went the Recovery route?

PROLIANT

Remove all external herdware e.g PCMCIA cards, expansion cards etc, restart the computer and press F8 when the screen goes black, keep pressing F8 until the Windows boot menu appears then select last known good config and try that.

LouBlue

PROLIANT wrote: »

Remove all external herdware e.g PCMCIA cards, expansion cards etc, restart the computer and press F8 when the screen goes black, keep pressing F8 until the Windows boot menu appears then select last known good config and try that.

I have no idea what those 2 things are so don't think I have any external hardware or if I do, don't know what it looks like.

Sorry - not techie at all.

Browntoa

you won't lose any data if you do Windows Repair , it just overwrites the windows components with fresh data. it's very easy to do , just boot the PC from the CD , and follow click on a copule of buttons

The Recovery option on F11 will lose data

I've seen your same problem on quite a few PC's recently , not put my finger on what is causing it , but try the unplug everything first

he means any printers , scanners etc that are plugged into the PC

PROLIANT

Sorry my mistake I assumed from your post it was a laptop that you were using.

LouBlue

Browntoa wrote: »

you won't lose any data if you do Windows Repair , it just overwrites the windows components with fresh data. it's very easy to do , just boot the PC from the CD , and follow click on a copule of buttons

The Recovery option on F11 will lose data

I've seen your same problem on quite a few PC's recently , not put my finger on what is causing it , but try the unplug everything first

he means any printers , scanners etc that are plugged into the PC

What CD would that be? Only CD I can find is a system restoration guide cd.

Browntoa

will be an Xp operating sytems Cd