MY COMPUTER WILL NOT LOAD THE OPERATING SYSTEM
By Wolfdave
Last week I had a Computer in for repair. The owner said it would not load his Operating System. After hooking up the bare essentials: Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse, I fired the machine up. I got the ‘single beep’ which means the Computer hardware is ok. It completed POST but at the first Windows XP screen it froze. And despite several attempts, I could not even get it to load in ‘Safe Mode’.
Normally when carrying out maintenance or repairs, I always back-up all the data on the PC. But since I couldn’t load his Operating System, even in Safe Mode, then this was going to require a different approach. This is relatively straight forward providing you have a spare Hard drive which has Windows XP loaded on to it. I explain this procedure in my blog which you can read by clicking the link at the end of this article.
Once that task was completed I could set about solving the issue of his Operating System not loading. I was able to determine that three start-up files were either missing, had been moved or had been deleted. The owner of the PC could have inadvertently deleted these files, or more seriously, Spyware or Viruses were responsible. So, the Operating System Installation had to be repaired.
We need the Operating System’s Installation Disc to perform this operation. But first, we have to alter the Boot Sequence, in Set-Up, so that the CD Drive is the first, boot device. Then ‘Save and Exit’ set up. Next, restart the PC insert the Windows Installation Disc, and choose ‘Boot from CD’. After a few moments loading, a dialog screen appears with: Install – Recovery Console – Exit. You can try Recovery Console and follow the instructions, but I have found the best method is to select, Install.
After another few moments, a message reports that a previous Installation has been detected, with a choice of: A new installation or Repair the existing Installation.
I chose the ‘Repair’. You are then warned that data may be lost during the repair and you should perform a Back-Up. Having already saved the data, I clicked on continue. From now on, it’s just a case of sitting back and letting the repair installation get on with it. A big sigh of relief, twenty-five minutes later when Windows finally loaded to the Desktop screen. I can confirm that all his data was still in place.
This is when you should, re-start your computer so that you can re-enter set up and reset the boot sequence back as it was. However, I had noticed that his Anti-Virus program was almost a year, out of date. Suspecting that a Virus was the most likely cause of his missing files, turning off the computer could have deleted them again. Fortunately I had an up to date version of a well known and trusted Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware Utility on CD which has the option of running a virus scan from the CD. No less than 25 Spyware and 2 aggressive Worm Viruses were successfully removed. The owner now has his Computer back and phoned to say it was working fine and actually running much faster. I hope he has updated his Anti-Virus.
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David Snowdon has been working with Computers since 1980. He is a published writer and author of many Computer articles. The procedure he used to save data in this repair is explained in further detail in another Blog, see the right hand column.