Can anyone help (computer)

[Taliesins]

Just been on my desktop when for no reason it shut down. Now it wont restart just gets halfway through starting and restarts again. Get a message asking how I want to start normally or last known config that worked safe mode etc. but no matter which I select just keeps restarting
Is it kn@ckered??

[MattF]

XP? Is there a default config type boot option on that list?

[Taliesins]

XP? Is there a default config type boot option on that list?

Yes its XP. Dont understand next question (I am not computer literate)

[MattF]

Yes its XP. Dont understand next question (I am not computer literate)

That boot screen with the safe mode, normal and other options. Does it
reboot even when you select safe mode?

[Taliesins]

That boot screen with the safe mode, normal and other options. Does it
reboot even when you select safe mode?

Yes

[Nismo]

Kick it & swear at it & i guarantee it will work. If it doesn't then you will at least feel a bit better after teaching it a lesson

[angusglover]

Is it a blue screen before reboot?

[Taliesins]

Is it a blue screen before reboot?

For a split second with white type cant read what it says too quick.

[mark1316]

For a split second with white type cant read what it says too quick.

There is a possible 2 or 4 things wrong with the system
1/ the ram is gooses and thats wht the bluescreen message is about
2/ There has been a bad piece of hardware or software installed in the last day and its causing a driver issue
3/ Could be a heating problem with the cpu and fan sink
4/ It could be that the conig.sys file has been damaged and thats why you cant boot even with safe mode.
If its the last is possible if you are using shall we say a grey copy of windows its been zapped by mr gates. This is not a new thing it hapens from time to time.
If you wipe the hdd and reinstall it should be ok. If you need data off it then use the hdd as a slave in another system and get your data off that way.
Hope this helps you out

Mark

[Taliesins]

There is a possible 2 or 4 things wrong with the system
1/ the ram is gooses and thats wht the bluescreen message is about
2/ There has been a bad piece of hardware or software installed in the last day and its causing a driver issue
3/ Could be a heating problem with the cpu and fan sink
4/ It could be that the conig.sys file has been damaged and thats why you cant boot even with safe mode.
If its the last is possible if you are using shall we say a grey copy of windows its been zapped by mr gates. This is not a new thing it hapens from time to time.
If you wipe the hdd and reinstall it should be ok. If you need data off it then use the hdd as a slave in another system and get your data off that way.
Hope this helps you out

Mark

1/ Could be
2/ no hardfware installed for at least 6 months
3/ Could be
4/ Its a proper copy.
I dont understand how to retrieve the data does a reinstall affect programmesthat are on it?

[stormforce]

1/ Could be
2/ no hardfware installed for at least 6 months
3/ Could be
4/ Its a proper copy.
I dont understand how to retrieve the data does a reinstall affect programmesthat are on it?

i had something very similar with my other puter beggining of the year and the re-boot disc wouldn't work in it either to restore the puter back to factory settings so i had some local guy look at it and managed to reload xp etc but it was the only way of getting to use the puter

[Tallyman]

If you reload to factory settings from the supplied set up disc you will probably wipe everything installed on the HDD. If you have a Boot disc try that, otherwise see if you can borrow something like a disc based copy of Linux and use that to boot a separate operating system from the CD-Rom. That might at least get you access to the hard drive to back-up any needed files.

[Andy1]

With XP there are "Restore points" in the computer. You can go back to when it last worked OK and start again. It's worked for me a few times. All programs/Accesories/System tools/System restore. Of course this only works if you can get into it in the first place.

[codlord]

Does it always restart at the same point/time in the boot-up sequence or does it vary? How far does it get? To the windows logo? to the desktop/login screen?

See here for useful tips, first off I would do #8 which will hopefully enable you to see the "blue screen of death", you can sometimes try googling some of the text on these messages and sometimes get an idea of where the problem might lie.
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-6031733.html

If its a hardware issue (quite likely) then first take out and re-seat all cards/memory, maybe even the CPU if its easy. Then try to take out any components/cards/memory that are not essential. Try removing all but one memory stick, try different combinations of memory sticks in different slots. If no joy then try borrowing components to swap - i.e. graphics card, PSU. Power supply unit is not an obvious one as people think "well it powers up so it must be o.k." but I have had numerous weird problems like yours eventually tracked down to a just simply a "dodgy" power supply. Trouble is with a problem like this it could really be any component, motherboard, CPU, anything...

[AndyLala]

You will need to boot an o/s of some description.

if system files are damaged/missing/corrupt you will need to replace them


A few warnings first...
* you do have a back up don't you...
* you do know how to recover the backup don't you...
* you have all the original software to re-install, don't you...

read this...
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
second half more useful than the first.

And this...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/

be aware, depending on what has casued this in the first place, once you get the o/s to boot, and get to your data... you better have a great way of getting your data off... then hosing the whole machine and building it from scratch... plenty of tools out there to 'properly wipe' the hard drive, so you can start again... (at least 7 random deep level consecutive formats should do it)

Good place to start cleaning disks...
http://www.cbltech.co.uk/data-shredder.html
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/pr...anser/faq.html


Prevous flavour of Symantec did exactly this for me just over a year ago.
Anti-virus programs are great for doing this... various previous flavours of Symantec have done it for me on a number of occassions. Try www.avast.com (best of all its free, and I haven't found a machine it won't run on yet)