A mate's computer gets to the windows screen with the blue bar that scrolls under the windows logo and doesn't go any further. He has tried re seating the memory, graphics card and hard disk connections but still the same. He has also tried it with nothing else plugged in to any USB or ethernet ports but still the same.

Anyone got any ideas.

Cheers.

[Edited on 16/12/07 by stuart_g]

Usual problems seem to be hard drive failure or power supply failure.

Have you tried booting in safe mode? (press F8 whilst it's booting up)

Cheers

Mark

our workshop laptop did that a few months ago and ended up with a new H/D being fitted

did try to boot in safe mode but it only got so far then just stopped.

Do you think doing a windows repair may sort it?



[Edited on 16/12/07 by stuart_g]

quote:

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Originally posted by mookaloid
Usual problems seem to be hard drive failure or power supply failure.

Have you tried booting in safe mode? (press F8 whilst it's booting up)

Cheers

Mark

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When it's booting, wait till it;s gone past the BIOS screen, then press F8 (keep pressing it is better, as you don't get a very big window to do it in), Then you should get a boot menu including Safe Mode - choose that and boot Windows in it. It'll look crap, as all the graphics drivers won't be loaded.

Once it's booted in safe mode, restart it as normal and see if it'll now boot (sometimes it will, sometimes it won't). If it does, cool, if not, restart it in safe mode again.

Look in the event viewer (normally control panel - administrative tools), to see if anything's reporting as failing when booting up. That should show up any buggered drivers or services.

Look at add / remove programs in teh control panel - there's probably a windows update which has gone in there which conflicts with one of the drivers - uninstall the most recent one installed (if it's gone in very recently), and try restarting again. Windows updates come in batches, so you might have to try several. They can always be re-installed afterwards.

Either that or something hardware related has failed. It's more likely to be software or a driver tho.

HTH


Vince

Currupted file system would be my guess as the drive starts to fail.

A. Take the drive out, take it to a mate, stick it on as a slave drive, may have to change a jumper on the drive, copy what you need off while you can. Fit it back in and try a full / clean install of windaz.

B. Take it out, take to computer shop and ask for one of these please but bigger!, install a new drive and install windaz and then stick it back in as a slave and copy the data off the old drive onto the new one, remove the old drive as it it fails could take out the mainboard if you're really lucky Overall performance would be degraded with a failing drive especially if it's was on the same ide channel, (presuming it's an ide drive)

My 2 penneth

Rich

quote:

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Originally posted by stuart_g
A mate's computer gets to the windows screen with the blue bar that scrolls under the windows logo and doesn't go any further. He has tried re seating the memory, graphics card and hard disk connections but still the same. He has also tried it with nothing else plugged in to any USB or Ethernet ports but still the same.

Anyone got any ideas.

Cheers.

[Edited on 16/12/07 by stuart_g]

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Almost certainly hard disk failing.
Has he backed up recently ?
Depending on the PC there may be a BIOS disk checker, but elsewise need to look at getting a floppy or CD with some boot files and o utilitys to check / repair.
Else pull it out and stick it in another PC as a slave wildst you get anything important off it.........

It's worth checking the memory.... I'd suggest just burning memcheck onto a bootable CD-ROM and let it run for a couple of hours. If it runs through the entire cycle it's not the memory, power supply etc etc... and then it's either the HD or windows....

I'd also suggest using XP's repair option... Worth a try...

It's this type of situation where having a few Gb on a spare HD is useful, install it as the master HD (with the old HD as a slave), burn a new copy of XP onto it then see if you can read the information on the old hard disc. IF you can it's likely just a marred up copy of XP....

Always worth a CMOS reset

Boot from floppy and run chkdisk

If it's getting into Windows and then failing it's most likely to be Windows that needs fixing. Get what you can off it, format the disk and install again.

thanks for the suggestions chaps.

a couple of weeks ago I put him another disk in as he was getting low disk space warnings, I don't know if he's transfered all photo's etc to the new disk yet.

Burn Knoppix onto a CD.

It'll boot into Linux straight from the CD and not effect the existing HDD's at all.

You'll be able to read from the drives then and copy across onto network/memory keys...etc.

Fantastic CD...Just a bu88er to download!

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

I had exactly this problem when I had some memory that was going wrong. It crashes when the dodge sectors are written to (ie during the Windows startup)...

If you've got two sticks of RAM in it might be worth taking one out and if the problem persists swapping them (IE its unlikely both sticks will go wrong at the same time)....

Alter bootup sequence and try a start from CD.

Steve

Its highly likely to be a corrupt windows file rather than anything as terminal as a HD failure. Windows update always used to be good at corrupting windows files so your system wouldnt boot up at all, they seem to have sorted that though.

Try safe mode (booting usually takes a lot longer than in normal start mode) then a system restore back to when the PC was ok. If that doesnt work sick the windows cd in. Go into the bios (del or F2 on the post screen) change the first boot device to CDROM. Restart, wait for the CD to load up and run the repair option. Its a bugger to use on XP, but you should be able to sort it.

It could be a dodgy ram stick too, but its unusual for it to get that far into the boot sequence if it is. Try going into the bios and turn off quick boot. Then it will do a full memory test when it boots up, if that works, then it should be ok, at least in theory.

David

I've used this trick a couple of times now, I've had similar problems but they sometimes end up being the HDD after all. After a few goes it finally says that there's no boot device or similar. Usually means a dying HDD. I have done the 'freezer' trick with a couple of disks and it actually allowed me to retreive all the data I needed. I had to re-freeze the disk a couple of times and eventually it pegged out totally. Worth a try when the thing looks terminal.

quote:

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Originally posted by Benonymous
I've used this trick a couple of times now, I've had similar problems but they sometimes end up being the HDD after all. After a few goes it finally says that there's no boot device or similar. Usually means a dying HDD. I have done the 'freezer' trick with a couple of disks and it actually allowed me to retreive all the data I needed. I had to re-freeze the disk a couple of times and eventually it pegged out totally. Worth a try when the thing looks terminal.

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