At my wit's end

Ish. I got stuck with a computer -- A Dell Dimension, just over a year old.

The owner told me he was reading his email on a dialup connection when his computer just froze -- naturally, he just turned it off manually.

Now, upon trying to boot the machine, I cannot get it to boot in Safe Mode or "Last Known Good Configuration" when given the options -- instead, I get the Blue Screen and the following message:

Session3_Initialization_Failed

STOP: 0x0000006F

Can't get it to boot from Setup CD, either. Any suggestions? And yes, I checked Microsoft.com. They have this error for Windows NT and Microsoft Server 2000 -- nothing for XP Home.

 

XP is based off NT

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=153742&sd=RMVP

Try that.

 

Seems plausible enough, but if I can't get the computer to boot at all -- not even in Safe Mode -- how am I supposed to copy system files?

 

Boot off the setup CD >_>

You said that you cannot do that however. What error are you getting when trying so?

 

That's the weirdest part -- I went into the Setup and made the CD-Rom the primary drive from which to Boot. It ignores me, however, and goes right to the screen that asks me whether I want Safe Mode or Last Known Settings that worked, etc. No matter which one I choose, I get the Blue Screen.

 

Can you get just a plain command line and try running the setup file off of that?

 

Can't you take the hard drive out and put it in a different computer, then mess around with the start up files there? If worse comes to worse, you can format it and reinstall windows.

 

That's just it -- I'm pretty sure this is a hard drive issue.

Reformatting isn't an option -- this guy's whole life is on there. I know to make back-ups of my stuff, such as my check registers and pictures and documents, but the less-than-savvy Average Joe doesn't think of it.

I'll attempt to put the hard drive in my other computer and see if I can't get it to boot.

And no, I can't even get past the boot options screen to get a command line.

 

Well I have a thought, take the hard drive out of the equation, go to boot options, set number 1 to cd, then disable the other two. If it dosn't boot to the cd, then there is a problem with the bios, the rom drive or the cable. The cd is the most important thing, Now two other thoughts, first (or second not sure which i'm on a roll) there is a cool program out there called UBCD for windows (not the linux based one as it dosn't work with ntfs) this could allow you to scan this thing for a virus that sounds like what the problem is. The drawback is you have to build this disk with bart pe, and your xp disk with service pack 1 or better. I built one and after a week of attempts finally got it to work. Now my third thought was similar to everyone elses, Take the hard drive out, make sure it is set to master, then on a good running system hook up the drive to the second ide channel, and set your cd drive to slave, then boot. It will recognise the drive and you can pull all the useless crap this guy had on his system that is his whole life, that wasn't important enough to back up. Then you can clean the system with numerous virus sweeps and spyware sweeps, or just format it and clean boot. Which will run better in the end, These are my thoughts and I hope they work for you.

One last thing, when ever a dumb ass customer says he was reading his e-mail and splat the computer just froze, he was either looking at porn, or viagra from mexico, and 9 times of 10 caught something nasty that norton/mcafee couldn't catch. Let me know how close I am on this last part.