What the hell?

[madman6510]

One of my computers won't boot up, all it does is give me an error message. It was making funny noises earlier... How the hell do I fix this? I have some important stuff on that computer!

 

 

 

[Futurama]

i think you need to whack the windows installer cd in.

 

that or a floppy you should have somewhere called "boot"

[madman6510]

But that would wipe all my IMPORTANT data. Is there any way to recover anything before I re-install Windows?

[Aznhuskarl]

That's hard to say. I don't know what happened to your hard drive at the first place.

 

 

 

I recently got those messages once my main hardrive's busted. I've noticed it once it shuts down itself with creeky and other Shutdown crack related sounds.

 

{This happens once you use up too much memory where the Hard drive can't swap correcltly.}

 

My hard drive was at 95% full so it was normal for my case to crash my computer.

 

Yesterday I've just bought myself a better hard drive and switched my old one as a Slave drive {so I can recover my data and work.} My old drive's memory is still intact but sometimes it does shut down by itself once I heard the crack noise.

 

 

 

Back at your booting case, you need your OS CD or floppy disk to reintall your OS.

 

{You will need to reinstall windows on the working hard drive for 30 minutes.} You don't need to wipe anything at this point.

 

If you already have a hard drive (s) with the OS, then it's a more complicated matter. You need to tell us what's going with what drive.

[Futurama]

yeah - what the guy above said basically.

 

if you need the data that badly you could go to a recovery company too, but that costs money :]

[zonda]

People always think Windows CD = reformat.

 

 

 

Just let everything on the CD load, select your drive, it will say "there is already a windows dealio on here..." then when it asks if you want to format it say "no". I know, it's one of those really difficult things. All this does is replace your windows files, so if your computer is messed up because you/someone/something deleted / disabled something you needed, or because of corrupt files, this is the winning method. Don't waste time using "repair" or the "recovery consol"

[____]

Then have fun reinstalling applications and services because windows no longer knows they exist :P

[Mercifull]

Try just booting from the windows CD, not reformat, not repair

 

Then do a ScanDisk and restar.

[zonda]

Then have fun reinstalling applications and services because windows no longer knows they exist :P

 

 

 

Actually if you set all your information the same when you reinstall windows (like your username and whatnot) that shouldn't be an issue. When I reinstalled windows without reformating I changed my computer name / user name.... then I saw nothing on my desktop and I was like wtf? Then I remember they were under my documents/zonda instead of my documents/kix for example.

 

 

 

It shouldn't delete any DLL's or anything else either... so if anything, the only thing you'd have to do is remake a few shortcuts like in my case.

 

 

 

If you had to reinstall all your programs, you might as well reformat, but like I said, you don't.

[Cruiser]

Then have fun reinstalling applications and services because windows no longer knows they exist :P

 

 

 

From the Windows CDs you can select "repair" on current installs. NOT the recovery console but into the installer when it detects current installations. It replaces critical system files and nothing else. Your registry remains intact along with all your installed programs and files. When done right all you have to do is reinstall windows updates beyond what your CD installs.

 

 

 

That nifty little feature has saved my [wagon] a few times now. :lol:

[Mementh]

if it was making noises.. your computers probabbly dead.. new hard ddrive time..

[n65uk]

Look at the picture again...it's the BIOS attempting to load from a CD. So either make sure there is no CD in there or tell the BIOS to load from your hard disk straight away. If that isn't the problem, then the bootloader is screwed (caused my old ME machine to die)

[Aznhuskarl]

if it was making noises.. your computers probabbly dead.. new hard ddrive time..

 

 

 

not necessarily, it's just a hard drive problem. He only need another hard drive to lod on his computer and recover his old stuff from the "busted" drive.

 

 

 

That's the exact same thing that happened with my drive {and I told him what I've done in my previous post.}

 

 

 

 

Look at the picture again...it's the BIOS attempting to load from a CD. So either make sure there is no CD in there or tell the BIOS to load from your hard disk straight away. If that isn't the problem, then the bootloader is screwed (caused my old ME machine to die)

 

 

 

 

It's not the bootloader problem yet. This message appears when you don't have a hard drive.

[zonda]

Look at the picture again...it's the BIOS attempting to load from a CD. So either make sure there is no CD in there or tell the BIOS to load from your hard disk straight away. If that isn't the problem, then the bootloader is screwed (caused my old ME machine to die)

 

 

 

Nah, because after it would try to boot from a CD, as soon as it realizes theres no CD in there to boot from, it moves on down the list... I.E. to your floppy drive(s) hard drive(s) or external drive(s)

 

 

 

not necessarily, it's just a hard drive problem. He only need another hard drive to lod on his computer and recover his old stuff from the "busted" drive.

 

 

 

Er.... if you could access your files but couldnt boot from that HD, sounds like your windows files were currupt / missing... if the hard drive were busted, you wouldn't have been able to access any files on it at all. And yes, it is possible that his hard drive isn't spinning. In that case, putting in the windows cd will do nothing because it won't be able to recognize any drives to install windows on.

[n65uk]

Nah, because after it would try to boot from a CD, as soon as it realizes theres no CD in there to boot from, it moves on down the list... I.E. to your floppy drive(s) hard drive(s) or external drive(s)

 

 

 

Indeed, which is why I said check there is no CD in there.... :) If there is a CD in there, and it attempts to load it, and can't it won't go any further.