wat? i dunno

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by KingSteve, Jan 7, 2009.

  1. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    Im really bad at this kind of stuff so hopefully someone can help.
    All i know so far is that when i try to boot windows, it goes to the safe mode / last known good config screen. tried to load the last known good config and it didnt help. i was told that after a windows update was installed and computer was rebooted, it just wouldnt load windows. sorry for the lack of info, but i got nothin... im tempted to just reinstall windows.

    anyone?
     
  2. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Hi Steve

    Guessing it wont go into Safe Mode either and recycles back to same screen?

    Could try a repair of windows and boot to OS CD.

    Or as you say just bite bullet and go for clean install, but does the HD have data thats needed to be recovered first? if so I did a weird trick a while back, just one of those weird moments when a spark of genius jumps out and as I have Acronis True Image 2009 installed, and a rescuse CD created it booted to that and managed to be able to just Image the My Documents folders and other folders to portable HD, then formatted PC and installed Windows XP again, installed the 15day trial of Acronis 2009 (available from Majorgeeks) on that PC, plugged in the portable HD and managed to drill down into the Image and right click copy and pasted the folders to the desktop and then left the user to move them into the correct folders.
     
  3. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    nope, no safe mode either. ill try a windows recovery.
    there really isnt anything important on the HDD. its just a network student computer. ill have to reinstall a bunch of cad programs if i reformat which kind of sucks, but its not that big of a problem.
     
  4. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    k for some reason im not even able to boot from cd... changed the boot order in bios to cdrom and still goes to the safe mode screen.

    edit: nvm the cd drive wasnt plugged in all the way...:-o
     
  5. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    i think the hdd might be fried or something. im on the windows recovery screen, and i type in dir at the c:\ prompt and i get "an error occurred during directory enumeration"

    i dont get it :(

    wtf somehow i dont think windows was even installed.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2009
  6. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    If installing WinXP, you shouldn't be at a screen where you'd type "C:\dir". You probably pressed "R" to enter the Recovery Console. This is misleading and was worded poorly by Microsoft. At the screen where you pressed "R", you want to press Enter to install Windows. For an easy to follow how-to guide on installing a fresh copy of WinXP, read this article. If you want to try a repair install, read this article.
    :-D
     
  7. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    yeah dude i know... i was trying to recover a windows install that for some reason wasnt on the hard drive in the first place. i ended up reinstalling
     
  8. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    it was really weird. a student here said he noticed windows updates were done installing and was prompted to restart. after he restarted, windows wouldnt boot. it turned out windows magically got uninstalled.
    what i was trying to find out with the c:\dir was to see if there were any directories on the c drive. i quickly found out windows wasnt there... crazy stuff.
     

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