Cannot boot up/recover Laptop

[Chitty's Leader]

Hi one & all.

I seem to have a big problem with my laptop. The problem has manifested itself since I ran out of battery while doing a regular spyware sweep.

When I restarted the thing up again, I got the black screen with "Boot in safe mode," "Last known configuration," etc. etc. Selecting one of these, the system seems to begin to boot, but ultimately brings me back to this same screen.

So then, I tried inserting the OS disc with the hope of starting from scratch. This gets so far, but then I'm confronted wth the blue screen of death saying, "A problem has been detected & Windows has been shut down to prevent damage....... If this is the first time you have seen this screen, etc" I cannot see any way of moving from this screen - my only option as far as I can tell is to restart the laptop and go through this whole process again, only to get to these same screens each time, and no further.

This is really frustrating!!!
Would anybody have any ideas? Thank you in desperation.


Edit: I thought it may be useful to post up the error message I'm getting, means nothing to me, but it might do to one of you!

Stop: 0X00000024 (0X001902FA, OXF7A1680C, OXF7A1650C, 0XF6FFABBA0

ntfs.sys - Address F6FFABBA base at F6FEE000, DATE STAMP 3d6de5c1

[bjkeates]

If it won't even work with the recovery CD and refuses to format the hard drive and start again, it sounds like something on the hard drive has got seriously corrupted. It certainly sounds like either a RAM or hard drive issue but I'd say that the way the problem was caused suggests it's more likely to be the hard drive. Assuming you have already either backed up anything you want to save on there, I'd try booting into DOS and using FDISK to format your drive through there, rather than let the OS do it. If there's a corrupted version of the OS on your hard drive which is causing issues during recovery, the logical thing to do is totally wipe the partition and start again with the hard drive. Once you have it wiped and then the primary partition re-created and blank, try using your recovery CD again.

If your laptop has a floppy disk drive, create a boot disk for DOS on another computer (I normally use the Windows ME emergency startup disk even though I run XP, any will do really) or alternatively download a DOS bootable CD such as UltimateBootCD and run that. You will need to enter your BIOS on start up and change your settings so that the first boot device is your CD drive or floppy drive, whichever is appropriate.

[chandlers dad]

Make sure that your bios is set up to look for the CD as a boot device. When the computer boots, it usually says "for setup, hit F2" or the like. Hit F2 and go into the setup and tell the computer to look for the CD first, Floppy second then hard drive third.

Put the recover CD back in, shut it down and start it up again and see what happens.

If it does not boot off of the CD I would wonder if your bios motherboard battery has gone dead and lost its settings. To check it, look in your laptops book, and find the bios battery. Find the size and get a new one. Take it out and put the new one in and go back to the setup as all your data may be lost on the boot up sequence.

[Keef]

If you're trying to recover data from the hard drive, and Windows won't accle, then I'd suggest using a bootable CD with Knoppix. That will run from the CD and allow you to read stuff off the hard drive if it's at all readable. I've recovered important files for several friends that way. You then save to floppies or down the network if you have one.

If you just want to get the computer working again, and the data on it don't need to be recovered, then I'd remove the hard drive and fit a replacement (Ebay may be a suitable source). You could even fit a larger HD to give yourself more working space.

[Chitty's Leader]

Thank you all for your help with this. With the help of a more knowledgeable friend, managed to determine that the error was due to many registry streams being open when the computer shut down (I think this is what he said to my untrained ear.....). Anyway, managed to run Knoppix, repair the problem and restarted it with no data loss. Very happy!
So, thanks once again with this unusual problem!