help with my laptop

[Fromfirst2Last1987]

ok well one night i was on my laptop and i had to charge it so i ahd it plugged in and was playing. there was a power surge and it corrupted the boot file and now it wont boot up windows. i choose boot with last known working configuration and it still wont boot. any ideas on how to fix this. or anyone have the dell support number. i looked online for it and its not listed. theres just the dell shopping number.

[Mercifull]

Dell support: http://support.dell.com/support/topics/ ... &~lt=popup

 

 

 

All the number you'll ever need there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be warned that Dell will probably just tell you to format. You dont really want to do that until a last resort. If you had a power surge it could be a hardware problem rather than software but to try it out and see boot from the windows cd or if you have a windows boot disk (floppies) use them to reboot into windows and see what the problem is.

[Albosky]

I know EXACTLY what happened , and i can tell you EXACTLY how to fix it , but DO NOT , DO NOT attempt this if you are a complete novice user.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from what I'm guessing you are recieving a message like so

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"STOP 0x000000ED UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If so , continue on , if not , SPECIFY THE ERROR MESSAGE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This problem is caused upon power loss on systems that have "write caching" enabled for thier primary hard drive (very common for laptops as people allow their batteries to die) , what happens is windows is not able to save its current config to the disk due to the power loss. But on to your solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will need :

 

 

 

Your Windows XP disk

 

 

 

Your laptops Administrator password

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insert your windows disk into your CD/DVD drive and boot the laptop , FORCE IT TO LOAD WINDOWS SETUP , you may have to set the CD to the primary boot drive in the systems BIOS , if you are unsure as to how to do this , post back and i will post steps as I also have a dell laptop and the BIOS screens are ALL the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you get the the first screen of the Windows XP setup , Press R to choose the repair option.

 

 

 

Type the administrator password when prompted and wait . the recovery console can take many minutes to fully load .

 

 

 

You will be at a C:\> prompt when it is complete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

type this exactly

 

 

 

chkdsk /r

 

 

 

and press enter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This will also take quite some time to complete. when it completes and you are back to a C:\> prompt , type exit and press enter to restart your computer. Windows should now boot normally with none of your files or configuration lost(except for some settings you may have changed before the power loss).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If the computer still does not boot properly , follow all steps outlined above , except instead of typing "chkdsk /r" type "fixboot"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have also had this same problem with my dell laptop during a power outage and it was quite annoying but an hours work saved all my files from a restore/format . A good idea when its back up and running is to disable write caching for the main boot drive , you may lose a very unnoticable amount of drive performance , but it saves the headache.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me know how it goes, I enjoy feedback on any advice I give :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Albosky