Computer won't boot, help!

SmokeyEyes

Hi,

The power went this morning just as our pc was booting up and when we switched it on again it went as far as the log in page and froze.

Now whenever we switch it on it won't boot in safe mode or normal mode and sometimes goes as far as the windows screen but just continually says 'please wait', other times it's just a black screen and won't even go that far.

Can someone please help, we don't want to lose all our files, the only option we can see at the moment is recovery mode but we haven't backed up our files and would lose tons of precious photos/documents etc.

Would love if someone could help!!

whitesands

I've had this a few times, usually I had to recover data using linux & then reinstall but somethimes if you leave it alone it will get past the black screeen.
Sometimes 2+ hours before it will pass the black screen, other times forget it, worth a shot anyway imo.

col_up

I say keep trying, but if it continues a similar thing happened to my mac and there ended up being a problem with the hard-drive. I took it to Apple and they recovered all my files so I'm sure you've not lost it all! It came at a price though!

Supermensch

Backup your files using a Linux live CD.

( http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/ )

The boot into recovery, using an installation or recovery CD, and open up Command Prompt.

Type in " chkdsk X: /p /r " (Without quotation marks) where X: is your Windows drive (Usually C: ).

Sup08

This can be caused by a corrupt file on the HDD or a bad sector on the drive itself. Try boot into a linux CD (freely available online) a run an available disk checker on the drive.

SmokeyEyes

Thanks so much for all the great replies we'll give it a go and I'll let you know what happens!

SmokeyEyes

Sup08 wrote: »

This can be caused by a corrupt file on the HDD or a bad sector on the drive itself. Try boot into a linux CD (freely available online) a run an available disk checker on the drive.

Silly question but how do I go about running the disk checker??


So far we have:

Made a copy of Ubuntu Live CD.

Managed to boot using that and have access to all our files ( ).

Regarding back-up: Have about 900GB of files so we're going to buy an external hard drive this weekend to copy all the files across (something I should have done ages ago anyway) then just reboot the comp to factory settings and re-install the files.

Is there an easier way to do it or does that sound about right?

AncientW

I had similar problems and I went to my BIOS and set everything back to default and it worked. You can access BIOS by pressing either F10,F12 or Delete.

petercena

yes, it is quite common. but can be resolve easily by BIOS settings s mention above

SmokeyEyes

Thanks for all the great help so far!

We bought a 1tb hard drive yesterday and are trying to copy over everything but if keeps coming up with errors copying over that volume so is it just a case of going through and picking out the most vital info on our comp and transferring them over in sections or is this a common problem?

AncientW

As I said earlier, just enter your BIOS and select Load Fail-Safe Defaults (this will reset your settings in BIOS back to default) and then select Save&Exit Setup, enter y (y=yes) and then your computer SHOULD boot up. If you will still have problems with HDD then it's probably faulty. In that case - get a new one

SmokeyEyes

AncientW wrote: »

As I said earlier, just enter your BIOS and select Load Fail-Safe Defaults (this will reset your settings in BIOS back to default) and then select Save&Exit Setup, enter y (y=yes) and then your computer SHOULD boot up. If you will still have problems with HDD then it's probably faulty. In that case - get a new one

Thanks we got the HDD working and transferred over all important files!

Just did everything you said to reboot BIOS and it got as far as the please wait page and now it's stalled there!

Supermensch

SmokeyEyes wrote: »

Thanks we got the HDD working and transferred over all important files!

Just did everything you said to reboot BIOS and it got as far as the please wait page and now it's stalled there!

Your hard drives file system is most likely corrupt. You will need to run chkdsk on it. Do you have a recovery CD for your computer, or does your computer have a recovery partition?

Supermensch

Also, what error are you getting when you try to copy your files and what method are you using?

SmokeyEyes

Managed to copy / paste all of the important photos / music / files over to the HDD.

Comp has a recovery partition so we are now back up and running

I'm sure now that we'll discover a ton of things we forgot to copy over but all the really important stuff is there anyway and now it's a nice clean computer all over again!!

Thanks again for all the help folks, much appreciated!!