O/S won't start

Hey guys, just got over my uncle's house and he said he is having a problem with Windows loading. I asked him what was the last thing he did he said his nephew (8 years old maybe) was surfing the Net. I turn on the CPU and I see the Dell start up screen with the F2 setup and F12 boot options then the screen goes black with the blinking insert character in the upper left corner of the screen. It will not let me do anything beyond this except Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot. Any ideas as to what could be the problem? My uncle has a bunch of important files he needs and I don't know if putting in the recovery disk will erase them all.

 

He is running Windows XP Professional

 

You should be able to boot into safe mode and see what's up.

 

BB, How do I boot into safe mode? Do I go to F12 or F2 setup?

 

f8 F8 should be safe mode try it

 

Niether- right when the Dell screen goes away, start pressing F8 like a madman. Or, press F12 for the boot menu, select the hard drive (IDE0 I'm assuming), and right after you press Enter to select the hard drive, start pressing F8 repeatedly. You should be presented with a Boot Options menu, with Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Last Known Good Configuration, etc, etc,.... You can try any of these, but your best bet is Safe Mode or Last Know Good Configuration.... try it and post your results. GOOD LUCK!

hopperdave2000

 

I tried the F8 at the Dell startup and it went to another screen but then a message appeared stating keyboard error although the number lock and caps lock light are both lit up on the keyboard. I will try the pressing F12 for the boot menu, select the hard drive (IDE0 I'm assuming), and right after you press Enter to select the hard drive, start pressing F8 repeatedly method.

 

OK, I hit F12 at the startup screen and it took me to the Boot Device menu. I first selected the 6. IDE Drive Diagnostics option and these are the results (if they are related to my problem at all)
Primary IDE: Maxtor - Pass
Secondary IDE: Drives 0 and 1 are not supported

I rebooted and hit F12 again and this time I selected option
3. Hard Disk Drive C and nothing is happening.

 

Hitting the F8 key rapidly or holding it down did take me to this screen but i got the keyboard error that I mentioned before and no safe mode screen. I tried all the options in the Boot Device menu and they did not do anything at all except the option 6. IDE drive diagnostics options. Any other suggestions?

 

Or should I just pop in the recovery disk?

 

Your pc is trying to tell you something.

Is the keyboard cable loose, broken, or has little jonny swapped mouse and keyboard?

Are you using a ps2 (small round) or a USB keyboard. Do you have a substitute you can try?

Has someone entered the bios and turned off the type of keyboard you are using?

The Dell will NOT start with a duff keyboard/connection although lights may come on. Do they come an an off or do they just come on and stay on at power up ?


Studio T

 

inspected the keyboard and the cable looks fine, its a ps2 so I checked the pins inside and none of them are bent or missing. I substituted a usb keyboard and tried pressing F8 at startup and I got the same error msg: keyboard failure. Any other things to try?

 

PC's sometimes report keyboard errors when you rapidly press a key or hold a key down; the PC thinks a key stuck. If you go to the boot device menu (F12 I think you said) and choose Drive C:, and then immediately after pressing Enter to choose Drive C:, start pressing F8, you should get the Windows Boot Options menu. If you're not getting this menu, and nothing else happens after you select Drive C:, then you may have a hard drive problem. Go to the Maxtor web site (actually, I think Seagate bought Maxtor, so go to Seagate's web site) and download the Maxtor hard drive diagnostic. Run the diag as shown on the web site and it'll tell you if the HD is bad or not. If the HD is OK, and there's no data on it you need, boot up the recovery disc and reload.

hopperdave2000

 

thanks hopper, will give it another try

 

I don't know if you checked what I said so i will try once more.

When you switch on a the keyboard is one of the VERY FIRST THINGS that the bios checks - it will not proceed if it can't get a satisfactory response. this could be a fault at the motherboard end, the cable or the keyboard end.

A USB keyboard wil not be recognised by a Dell bios set to ps2.

I asked about the lights - they can tell you a lot. The correct Dell sequence is.

Immediately upon supplying power, but before pressing the front start button.
all three lights flash once together and stay off.

Immediately on pressing the start button
All three lights tuen on then off then flash once together.
Then the num lock comes on by itself.

If this does not happen or two or more lights stay on there is a hardware fault.

Studio T

 

The lights did exactly as you said studio. I even contacted Maxtor (Seagate) and they had me run a diagnostic on the hard drive and it passed. I just got off the phone with Dell and that was a waste of 90 mins, as they advised me to take the CPU to a local Dell service provider. Last question, can I put in the reinstall Win XP Prof disk w/o erasing the hard drive?

 

While theoretically you can restore the system with the restore disk and not lose your data, I'd be reluctant to try that at this stage in case it goes wrong. See if you can get hold of another keyboard with the same end and see if you can get the computer into Safe Mode like that.

When 'repeatedly' pressing the F8 key, don't hold it or press it so quickly that the computer could mistakenly assume that the key is stuck. Recite the alphabet in time with your pressing and see if that works.

Also, if the disk is good, which your test says it is, you can slave the hard disk to another one to back up the data before attempting a restore. Someone will give you instructions on that if/when you need to do that.

 

By the way, does your uncle have anti-virus, anti-spyware and a firewall on his computer? Whether he has or not, he could have been hit by something nasty when his nephew was surfing the net but you will need to get into Safe Mode anyway before that can be dealt with.