Unplugged! ewww

Ok you wonderful helpful folks here, I have a doozy for ya.

My brother-in-law was on his computer the other day and bumped the cord and it came unplugged and shut off. He was in the middle of installing a new game, some Tiger Woods golf game he got a Walmart. Since that happened he has not been able to get into Windows. He has a Compaq with Windows XP, this is all I know right now but I can find out more. THis is what happens when he turns the computer on:

Comes up to text that says We apologize,blah blah, windows did not start successfully, says it may have been due to a recent hardware or software change, etc. etc. then says somethig about choosing from the last good configuratoin but gives the choices of starting in safe mode, safe with netwoking, etc. However no matter what he chooses it goes to a countdown page and then cuts off from starting windows and goes right back to the same screen it was at then he turned on the computer.

Is there anything he can do here besides just reinstalling Windows, would that even work. Is there even any way to tell from a distance what is going on with the computer?

Thanks so much in advance for even putting an ounce of brain power into this. I just do not know enough to do anythign here.

Dawn

 

You can try booting from the XP cd and choosing repair installation when that option comes up.

 

ok thanks i will tell him and let you know how that works out


Thanks so mcuh

Dawn

 

Ok, he found his disks and has tried a repair install and even tried to format the drive and reinstall, neither woks and it gives this on the screen, that i386/system32/halaacpi.dll cannot be accessed and gives an error code of 32768. ANY clues? THanks

Dawn

 

He hasn't formatted properly. (if that was his intention as you say)

He needs to set his Bios to boot from CD Rom and then follow THESE STEPS.