Urgent urgent help needed on IT front

16 Aug 2004

I work from home and a few months ago my pc died - thankfully I had a backup and eventually Morbius managed to get my pc going again ... but .... it's happened again and I am in shit creek seriously now as i don't have a backup sad

(i know I know it's been top of my list all week)
My pc basically turned itself off and will not reboot. It starts off and lists a load of files and and then gets into a loop of rebooting and getting as far as :(
Last time Morbius managed to get it loaded and I could get my backup which If I can do again then I can work off the laptop but really need my pc :(
Does anyone know anything about this and can help me out ???

16 Aug 2004

Just had a quick look around and it seems to be one of those problems that has various causes, the simplest things to try are to unplug all USB devices, including mouse and keyboard (or disbale USB from BIOS if you can) and seeing if it boots past the error, if it does plug everything back in and see if it works then.
The other is to remove the PCI cards from the comp, reboot if it works put one PCI card back in reboot.....etc adding one card each time. Dodgy memory(also check if it's loose) and CPU been named as possible causes.
Also which flavour of windows are you using?

16 Aug 2004

It might be a sign that the disk is on its way out... the file has become corrupt either by a disk error or by a virus....
Depending on the OS (win98/2000/xp) you might be able to boot from the operating system disk, from the CD's initial boot menu it should be possible to select (this is where it gets iffy) "Repair instalation" or if not then "boot with cd support"
The repair should alow you to get a working system up and running, but a warning, there are times when it trys to be to clever and might decide that the best action to take is to re-format the disk... xp seems particually un-friendly as it takes away most of the user intervention and does what ever it feels like mad

If you can boot with cd support then it should be possible to manually look at the hard drive...
Type C:
then dir
and it should list some files.. if it does then the damaged file can be replaced, which may or maynot solve the problem confused

I'm working from memory here.. but i'm sure there is a comman "expand" that allows you to copy a file from the CAB files on the CD onto the hard drive to replace the damamged one. If you type "expand /?" (no quotes) it will tell you what you need to type.
After that, and if it boots up ok, copy all the files you need to keep, then afterwards run a scandisk it that has errors then the drive will fail soon!
If no errors run a defrag, this wil give the drive such a work out that if its going to fail it probably will, then finally another scandisk.
If you need any more help then PM me and I'll give you my phone number and can always pop round later this evening as I've a shoot on at 7 and will not be done till about 9/10ish.
Hope this helps a little.

16 Aug 2004

Is all of your work on a diffrent drive to the C drive?
If it is then try putting the windows disk into the CD drive this will either fix windows or re-install windows. As long as your work is on another drive when windows boots up you will be able to reach it.
If you do re-install windows then you will have to install office again or the software that you use to run your work.
Hope this helps
Molly xx

16 Aug 2004

need a little more info on the version of windows,
this may sound strange, but do you have a USB mouse?
Unplug it any try booting again with it unplugged.
If it boots ok, plug it back in.
some things i found
"Windows halt after loading during boot-up
| 12/1/2002 2:36:46 AM | Posted by Larry
*I know exactly how mad and frustrated you are now. Be calm and try not to throw your PC out of the window.
This problem took me two days to figure out. My Windows XP got stuck during the startup. Booting in safe mode clearly showed that the computer stopped responding after loading
I tried almost everything including numerous re-installs and even wiped out my RAID array, but still got no good news. Many helpful forums and sites suggested different problem sources: enabling APIC, NT File System, updating BIOS, etc. After countless hours of trial and error, I finally found the problem source: the USB 2.0 card. Taking the card out resolved my problem.
If you encountered a similar problem, try to take out your PCI cards one-by-one. You might be able to boot-up again. Good luck! "
"MUP stands for "Multiple UNC Provider" which assists Windows in locating resources
>when more than one redirector is on a machine such as "Microsoft Client for Microsoft
>Networks" and the "Novell Client for Novell Netware". When a connection to a server
>is requested it does not know if the request is to a Novell server or an NT server.
>It will start looking for the server with the primary protocol on the primary requestor
>and then continue looking for the server on each protocol bound to each redirector
>until the server is found."
:shock: confused

: :?: :?:
"I know I'm late but you're all wrong.
This is how you fix the VERY common problem.
Boot off the windows cd, load the recovery console.
Type "disable mup"
Hit Enter
All done, windows works. is the service to connect to Novell servers. % of people won't need this.
Maybe an admin should sticky this. Almost every Win NT/2K/XP/2003 user will encounter this at some time or another."

Hope some of these help smile

16 Aug 2004

Here's all the information I have;
We're running XP Pro on a Athalon 2200 and last time we did manage to get the computer and runnign temporarily by renaming and swearing at it a lot sad

Hubby has tried everything possible including removing all usb/pci stuff and no joy.
At the moment it won't even reboot :( and so I guess it's totally knackered now :(
I have a feeling the disk is corrupt and so it's a non starter whatever we do :(

16 Aug 2004

Try resetting your BIOS back to it's default settings.