Can anyone help me fix my laptop?

[MelissaSue]

Okay.. so basically my laptop went all screwy last night and started out not opening any websites, (would open IE.. but then when I loaded a webpage nothing would show up) and basically proceeded to freeze while starting up windows and just stop at the blue screen that says "Windows XP" and not go anyfurther..

I ran a virus check and spyware check on it while I could still get into windows and came up with nothing.. but now I''m screwed.. since I can''t get to anything..

Does any one have any idea how to fix this? I know I can just reformat and start over, but I''d like to try to recover some of the stuff on my harddrive.. since it seems the hardrive is still OK.. Is there anyway to do this without being able to get into windows? From the DOS prompt maybe? I used to know DOS when I was like 6.. but since I''ve not had any use for it since then.. its sort of fuzzy.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Kaleigh]

I need to ask my 16 almost 17 year old, but in the mean time how about taking out the battery and then restarting it???

 

[Kaleigh]

As I suspected my daughter says to remove the battery wait a while put it back in then restart your computer. HTH.

 

[lost on 5th]

hmm sounds interesting.. if your still stuck with it today, post agian. there are a few things you can try in addition to the battery....

might also try starting in safe mode...shut down properly and try again...

for other things i would need to know more about the computer....


***also ...try not to worry too much. worst case you would be able to take it in someplace and they should be able to recover information... (i.e. bestbuy) it just has a cost tho...

 

[blueroses]

MS, that is terrible!!! After you try the battery thing, you might try doing a "system restore" and resetting the computer back in time a few days to an earlier restore point, before this stuff started to go wrong...

http://windows.about.com/od/tipsarchive/l/bltip548.htm

I''m not all that savvy but I''ve managed to do a system restore before and it was a lifesaver.

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[bopitaddict]

Date: 4/19/2005 9:50

7 AM
Author: lost on 5th
might also try starting in safe mode...shut down properly and try again...

to help clarify this, when you start up your computer, hit the f8 key and it should give you options on how to start-up. and as lost on 5th says, we''ll probably need more info to diagnose.

 

[MelissaSue]

actually - the system restore is what got me into the windows not starting up thing.. When it was just IE not working.. I started in safe mode and then it asked me if I wanted to do a system retore.. So I did.. and now windows won''t start..

Not in safe mode either.. won''t go past the blue screen..

I tried removing the battery last night.. even pulled the hard drive out and put it back in.. nothing helps. I let it rest for the day and am going to try again with it in a few minutes.. if still nothing i''m just gonna reformat... sigh..

 

[Momoftwo]

Did you try reloading Windows? I wouldn't reformat til you try several things only because you can avoid having to back up everything, but since you can't see anything but a blue screen it probably doesn't matter. What about defragging? Sometimes it's just a burp, other times it's that one thing gets corrupted and needs reloading. Now that you can't go back in time and do a system restore, you might try reloading before you reformat.

What about recovery disks? Did you ever make them? My 19 yr old son does a lot of our computer stuff when he's home and he works IT at his college, but sometimes even he gives up after contacting support and reloads everything. Sometimes things just get corrupted. How far back did you go in system restore? You might have restored too far back. I usually pick a date 1-2 weeks back at most.

 

[perry]

It sounds like your options are limited at this point.

If you do not understand what I am about to tell you - then it is very important to take your computer to someone who does understand.

If your computer still has a floppy drive, then you need to restart the computer with a "boot recovery disc" for the version of software you are using (i.e. Windows 9.

More recent computers may be able to be booted from a CD - dependant on how the computer was set-up.

One of the reasons I still like getting a floppy drive is to take advantage of this option (a computer with a flopy drive will almost always automatically try to boot from a floppy before it moves onto a hard disc (a setting that can be changed in some computers if you know how to do so).

The Boot Disk has a basic operating system on it, and some powerfull tools on it. You may be able to recover the computer using it, or you may be able to recover your most important data using it. You need to know how to use the basic operating system on the boot disc and the capabilities and limitations of the tools provided.

Otherwise, you may have to essentially whip your entier computer and reload all of your software (it takes me several days to get my computer resoted to where I had it - when I have full back-up of all critical data: I''ve had to do this twice).

In my case I try to back-up all data files about once a month (but sometimes slip another month). This includes my e-mail files (I know where they are stored). I do not back-up any program files as all programs can be reloaded. I do backup all data files from my various program files.

All this assumes that you do not have some hardware failure.

I wish you the best in this.

Perry

 

[bopitaddict]

when you start up the computer, does it automatically go into the blue screen of death? or does it go there after you try and go into windows?

if you can get into your bios, and do what perry says to boot off either a disk or a cd, that would be a first step in diagnosing the problem...

 

[drk]

I think I may have ended up with a problem like this on my laptop once before. Not the IE problem, but getting stuck on the windows boot screen.
I banged keys to no avail, until for some reason I hit Alt-Tab. Doing that brought up a little box with that showed me that two windows were open, and I could use Alt-Tab to select the other open window which had been hidden behind the blue boot screen. That other window was some message waiting for me to hit ok or something to finish booting windows. May be worth a try.
Let us know if it works!

 

[MelissaSue]

thanks for all the help folks.. I already reformatted and stuff though.. Honestly I had some things from school on there that I may have wanted to save, but won''t ever really ned, and everything else was my fiance''s junk (car photos, videos, games..etc).. so I just killed it all..It seems to be working fine now, except that I haven''t redownloaded all the annoying little plug-ins and stuff..

Perry- I looked for a boot disk for my comptuer.. but I didn''t have one.. just the system recovery CDs that basically just reformat and reinstall windows.. I probably should have made one at some point.. There is really not anway to reinstall windows XP anymore without a total reformat, from what I can tell. I Remember in previous versions there were options to repair windows.. etc.. but not anymore.. it seems to be an all or nothing thing..

Yeah... I''m a retard and never backup anything..oh well.. I had a hard drive crash on me once in college.. which was crappy.. but I never had windows pull a retard move on me like this one before.. something similar to the IE thing happened on my fiances PC a year or so ago.. but he was able to back everything up before he reformatted because windows didn''t just stop working..

So anyway.. I''m babbling.. thanks for all the help everyone!