Computer ?'s, please...

[brennahm]

So I finally picked up a monitor for my desktop that I moved from FL and the POS won't start up. I tested the monitor on a working laptop and it's fine. I hear the HD spin up and all but no BIOS splash screen or anything. None of my externals show any power either (keyboard, mouse...). Motherboard?

Also a laptop, starts up through BIOS fine, asks the safe mode question, and no matter what you select the XP logo with progress bar will display for about 2 seconds and the computer restarts. Repeat.

HD?
Tried booting from XP install disc, failed once and then went through and said the partition I wanted to install to was corrupted. I'd like to recover any pics/music that I can. Suggestions?

[Spy007]

Odd I know... but make sure ram is tight as well as the fans on CPU and other chips. Then swap keyboard and mouse (if you use PS2). If it gets through Bios and then goes to load windows, gives the "safe mode?" prompt, and you cannot get into safe mode... you might have bad sectors due to the move bouncing the drive around or something else. Try a repair with the CD after doing a scan disk with bootable hard drive tools downloadable through the manufacturers website of the hard drive.

[Zach929rr]

What he said ^

[Kim-n-Dean]

So I finally picked up a monitor for my desktop that I moved from FL and the POS won't start up. I tested the monitor on a working laptop and it's fine. I hear the HD spin up and all but no BIOS splash screen or anything. None of my externals show any power either (keyboard, mouse...). Motherboard?

Also a laptop, starts up through BIOS fine, asks the safe mode question, and no matter what you select the XP logo with progress bar will display for about 2 seconds and the computer restarts. Repeat.

HD?
Tried booting from XP install disc, failed once and then went through and said the partition I wanted to install to was corrupted. I'd like to recover any pics/music that I can. Suggestions?Bring it over and we can pull the drive and recover the data you want. Sounds like the boot sector is bad. Bad sectors can spread too, so I would recover the data before trying to repair the drive.

[TurboGizzmo]

So I finally picked up a monitor for my desktop that I moved from FL and the POS won't start up. I tested the monitor on a working laptop and it's fine. I hear the HD spin up and all but no BIOS splash screen or anything. None of my externals show any power either (keyboard, mouse...). Motherboard?

Beeps? sounds? any of the lights flash on the keyboard?



Also a laptop, starts up through BIOS fine, asks the safe mode question, and no matter what you select the XP logo with progress bar will display for about 2 seconds and the computer restarts. Repeat.

HD?
Tried booting from XP install disc, failed once and then went through and said the partition I wanted to install to was corrupted. I'd like to recover any pics/music that I can. Suggestions?

Backup just to be safe....then boot xp disc choose recovery console....run chkdsk.....and/or... fixMBR..and/or...fixboot....... if none of this makes sense contact your local nerd ;)

[Ricky]

The system will not POST (bios screen), this eliminates the HD as the primary problem, because a HD is not require for POST to happen. external devices (kb, mouse, etc) are initialized by POST, so if it doesn't POST, then external devices won't start. HDs will spin up, because they are given power.

This can point to a couple of things: memory, video card, processor, motherboard

I always start with memory, because it's the easiest. If you have multiple memory chips, pull them all and leave only one (in the first slot, usually labeled DIMM0 or DIMM1, whichever is lower). If it still doesn't work, swap the memory chips and try again. Sometimes a simple reseat fixes the problem, but you could have a bad chip, or slot.

Video card could have gone bad. If it's onboard video, it's slightly less likely, but still possible. Try another video card.

If it still doesn't POST, then move on to other things...


As for the laptop, You might try running a windows repair, just to see if it'll boot into anything. You could possibly have bad memory, or bad sectors on the disk (failing HD). If you can download and burn a memtest CD, they are bootable so you could test memory that way.

[Nick_Ninja]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons

[TurboGizzmo]

So I finally picked up a monitor for my desktop that I moved from FL and the POS won't start up. I tested the monitor on a working laptop and it's fine. I hear the HD spin up and all but no BIOS splash screen or anything. None of my externals show any power either (keyboard, mouse...). Motherboard?

Also a laptop, starts up through BIOS fine, asks the safe mode question, and no matter what you select the XP logo with progress bar will display for about 2 seconds and the computer restarts. Repeat.

HD?
Tried booting from XP install disc, failed once and then went through and said the partition I wanted to install to was corrupted. I'd like to recover any pics/music that I can. Suggestions?


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons

That recovery console requires the system to be at least able to be booted into....since its suck in a reboot loop they will have to use the console on the xp cd....

[brennahm]

Thanks guys, I'll get to working on this some more tonight and let you know.

Are you saying a bad video card would prevent the machine from booting at all? Hmmm...

[Nick_Ninja]

That recovery console requires the system to be at least able to be booted into....since its suck in a reboot loop they will have to use the console on the xp cd....


/fixboot

or

/fixmbr

[brennahm]

Got the desktop. Pulled all the memory and reinstalled one stick and it booted right up. Thanks. Now for the HDD on the laptop...

[brennahm]

Thanks for the help everyone. Got the boot fixed and all is now well. CSC RuLeZ!