Hello, whenever I press the Power button on my computer, it starts up with a black screen telling how it came across and error due to new hardware or such. It asks the simple things such as "Run in safe-mode, Run with Command Prompt, run with default before this occurred, or run normally.) Either one of these I press it just turns the whole screen black, the only thing that shows is the mouse. It was working fine yesterday but for some reason not today.
Any help is appreciated, thank you.
Running Windows XP, and Norton Antivirus (If it's a virus or such.)
(Side note, I'm using a laptop.)
Power button on ( In touch with tomorrow Toshiba) flashing across the screen, then it turns black.
I tryed tapping the F8 button during start up nothing happens.
Please help if possible. Thank You
thanks again!
I have the same problem as yours. But my computer didn't even come up with the screen which has multiple-choice, such as "repair my computer'' like yours. I tried to power on my computer and quickly press F2, F8, or not press any Fn keys, it always appears two choices: launch start up with repaire (recommanded) and start up normally. My computer went a black screen in either choice selected.
My laptop is Dell Inspiron 1525. The service tag is 297VPF1. I went to Dell technical support without luck. I'd very appreciate it if you could help me or any direction to go.
Did this happen after the power went out?
I had installed Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and then had installed and run fine. Then I shut down the PC (Dell Dimension) and a notice came up saying not to disconnect the power, as automatic updates were installing (apparently MSE enables this, even though I had it set to disable).
Well I freaked because I had just had an SP3 install totally destroy my other Dell running XP Pro (turns out the cause was because I had the Alureon rootkit on the machine, and other AV tools had not detected it) but I'm working on this other Dell machine to try and slave the hard drive from that to get my old data off, so I can't afford to have another machine go down.
I had no choice but to pull the power cord because I wasn't sure what exactly was installing. I did that, and when I rebooted I got the error message that ntfs.sys was missing or corrupted.
I tried the F8 method but I didn't have the repair option available on that screen. I also couldn't boot to any version of safemode, enabling the bootlogging or debugging options didn't do anything either, nor did trying to boot to last good config.
Fortunately I had the Dell disk which has the Windows OS and driver files on there, and rebooted the machine to CD. To do that on a Dell, when the machine starts up and the Dell screen comes up hit F12 and then the "boot to" screen comes up. I think it 's option 4 ...whatever option is the CD ROM option.
That will start up and make a good deal of whirring in the drive (it will get about as loud as it would if you were burning a CD). I can't remember for sure if I'm missing any steps, but for the most part it's self explanatory. A blue DOS type screen will come up with "Windows Setup" at the top. You''ll continue to hear the CD drive run as it sets up the operating system.
Then it gives options to either reformat the drive or run repair (wording is something along those lines). Select REPAIR by typing in the correct number. (Double check the number because if you reformat you're screwed!)
CD will continue to run and a black screen will come up and ask which partition you want to repair (most users will just have C, some may have D or E, etc). Select the correct number for the partition that has your operating system. if you only have "C" listed, then it would be 1. If you have "C" and "D" listed, "D" is most likely the one that holds your OS, so select whatever number is listed beside "D".
It will ask for the admin password. Generally you can just hit enter, as most people don't set a security policy enforcement in the BIOS for this area.
It will give a C:\Windows command line prompt (or D\Windows depending on what partition was selected).
Type chkdsk c: /r or chkdsk d: /r if it's the D partition.
This will run checkdisk (may take awhile) and it will repair/replace the missing files.
Once it has fully completed type EXIT and it will exit the program and reboot. You should then be back up and running.
Once back in, go to start -> settings -> control panel, and open "automatic updates" and select "turn off automatic updates". Remember best practices, and go to MS every month to get those updates. Always do a CUSTOM install. I try to stay a month behind on all my updates because that way if there are ones causing problems, it will give enough time to have them reported on most tech sites. I check out the sites before I do the update to see if there's any I should hold off on. (Unfortunately because of the big security risk in Feb of this year I broke my own rule and that's why my other machine is dead for the time being.)
CAUTION!!! - This fix works if the problem is just due to a power outage during automatic updates. If your PC has been having issues and you run checkdisk, you may lose access to some files. Granted, once they have been put in a dir folder, you can usually recoup them with a little know how, but it's a HUGE pain and can be time consuming.
If you did updates with service pack 3 and restarted and can't get bast the boot screen and your virus scans have been coming out clean, you may have the Alureon rootkit.
Most fixes for this will leave you wiping all your data, as once you get the black screen you most likely won't be able to get back in to back up. Before using an XP boot CD and running checkdisk (which may remove files or cause you to reformat the whole drive), if you feel brave, you may want to slave your harddrive to another PC that has Microsoft Security Essentials loaded on it (this program is known to be able to remove Alureon).
The new PC will allow you to boot with it's operating system, and then you MUST before doing anything else, right click on the slaved drive and select scan with Microsoft Security Essentials and see if it finds any malware (Alureon or otherwise). Once it finds any viruses, etc and cleans them, you should be able to use Norton Ghost or another clone software to copy your old hard drive and recover your files. There's plenty of info on how to do all of this all over the web. Don't just randomly copy them...your really need to clone the whole directory or you may have issues with long character name files and programs.
One last note, if you download Microsoft Security Essentials, be sure to go into control panel and disable automatic updates, because it will re-enable it, even if they were previously disabled..
Sorry so long, but hopefully this will help you or someone else :)
The IT Fox ;)
Princessladylee