Help! My laptop won't start up.

Monkey61

Hello,

I have done something to my laptop and I don't know what so any help would be very much appreciated!

When I switch it on it immediately goes to a black screen that says -

Press F11 for emergency recovery

NTLDR is missing

Press control alt and delete to restart.

Pressing F11 doesn't do anything and pressing control,alt,delete just brings back the exact same screen.

What do I do?

Famous45

Start up your laptop, and tap F8, then select Safe Mode, see if you can access your desktop this way.

If you are still having an issue post what laptop you are using and what operating system, ie windows?

If it doesnt load up via safe mode there could be an issue with your hard drive when you say you had a problem with your laptop did you hit it? Be honest, what exactly happened?

It's possible to attempt a system reboot but we'll cross that path when you post back.

Monkey61

Hi,

Nothing happens at all when I press F8.

I haven't kicked it or anything. Basically it has been taking ages to start up this last week and was diverting to one of those pale blue check disc screens every time I turned it on. I would skip the disk checking because the first time I let it get on with it, it froze and wouldn't complete the disk scan anyway.

I'm using Windows XP and it is a Hewlett Packard 510 laptop

Thanks

ElBarco

Monkey61 wrote: »

Hi,

Nothing happens at all when I press F8.

I haven't kicked it or anything. Basically it has been taking ages to start up this last week and was diverting to one of those pale blue check disc screens every time I turned it on. I would skip the disk checking because the first time I let it get on with it, it froze and wouldn't complete the disk scan anyway.

I'm using Windows XP and it is a Hewlett Packard 510 laptop

Thanks

Try tapping F8 continuously after the BIOS screen comes up. Might help. Although your other symptoms make it sound like the hard drive has given up the ghost.

Famous45

Keep trying F8, turn off your laptop and switch it back on, straight away tap F8 until the Advanced Boot Options comes up and then Safe Mode.

If this still isnt working for you, bear in mind it should pop up for you.

Switch off and start your laptop again, this time tapping F10, let me know anything happens then..

F10 should bring you to system reboot, if you proceed with this you will lose all info and it will return your system to its factory condition, ie: when you bought it.

Otherwise if none of this works your hard drive if f*cked. Let us know..

Monkey61

Absolutely no joy with the F8 at all.

Is there any way that if I brought it in somewhere for repair they could save the files on my hard drive?

I know I'm an idiot, but I have so much stuff that I haven't backed up. Aargh.

Famous45

Does F10 restore option load up for you?

Mr. Presentable

Get an XP cd and let it boot from that if possible. If it runs up use the "R" command and repair your install.

Insert the Windows CD and start the computer.
When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R.
Type a number corresponding to the Windows installation you wish to repair (usually 1) and press Enter.
When prompted, type the administrator password and press Enter.
From the command prompt, copy NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from the i386 folder of the CD to the root folder of the hard drive. In the example commands given below, C: is the hard drive and is the CD-ROM drive. You will need to change the drive letters if appropriate:
COPY \I386\NTLDR C:\
COPY \I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
Remove the Windows XP CD from the drive and restart the computer.


You may then be able to access your OS and fix whatever caused the problem initially

Famous45

F8 should work, there is no reason why this option cant come up, logging in thru safe mode will not lose any information on your system.

Monkey61

Okay F10 has gotten me into the Computer setup screen - is there anything I can do here that won't wipe eveything?

F8 just won't do anything at all...

Famous45

You can try what nipplenuts has said if you have the cd, but in most cases like this the person doesnt have the cd.

It's up to you, if your hard drive is dead, system reboot will go thru the process but most likely halt and restart the system half way through. If the information you have simply cant be lost then try a different option, if its possible to retrieve eventually by other methods then try restoring the c drive.

x in the city

I think you need to get a caddy and restore the missing file from another o/s

the file missing is a important windoze one so it wont boot in safe mode or anything, happened to me before.

or you could boot from a usb stick or external disk and use windows repair and copy the file from the ext device to your c:windows etc using the dos commands

daftdave

i had this same issue on an xp machine about 6 months and a repair from a windows xp cd did the trick perfectly , no data lost and all is working fine since ,