computer freeze on startup.

Hi folks,

NEED HELP!!!!!!

Computer which is an acer aspire sa90 with vista wont start.

It tries to start up and will get as far as the windows load screen from microsoft. the bar thinks for a while then freezes.

When I run a startup recovery it reports as unable to repair problem and no root cause.

Can anyone help.

 

An older machine, right?

What I would do is try to boot the computer from a bootable CD/DVD to eliminate all hardware except for the hard drive. If you have the install disk, try to boot from that and do a repair install. After entering the product code, select the OS if you can and select upgrade to repair it.

If you don't have the disk, get a Linux LiveCD and see if the machine will work with that. A LiveCD will not install Linux unless you launch the icon for it after it boots, needless to say don't do that, we want to see if the machine works when bypassing the hard drive. Puppy Linux is a good choice for this operation.

If you can, tap the F8 key as you boot and make sure you can boot to the CD/DVD.

 

Unfortunately no CD, Don't know if you can download one or not. It was an all in one computer that I picked up second hand as an intermitent machine as I want to build my own.

Willpost as soon as I know how linux works, trying precice puppy 5.4.3.

 

tried installing linux puppy precise 5.4.3 as sugested.

all goes well initially but instalation stops when it says loading kernel modules. have left it for several hours but nothing hapens.

Any sugestions.

 

I didn't suggest installing Puppy Linux, I suggested booting from a LiveCD.

Put the CD in the tray, close tray, try to boot computer.

 

My apologies i meant loading not installing.

Screen shows.

boot from CD
Loading drivers needed to access disk drives done
searching for puppy files done
loading the puppy_precice_5.4.3.sfs main file copying to RAM done
setting up the layered filesystem done
performing a switch_root to the layered filesystem done
Making the file systemusable depmod done
Updating network-drivers-list pixbf-laders gtk-icon-cache desk-icons done
Updating unique hostname done
Loading kernel modules.....

Thats where everything stops.

I did however run seatools to diagnose my harddrive and it reported that Both my FAT16 and NTFS files have
file name errors
errors in index
erors in metadata file records.
But quite frankly I dont know how to repair them. hope you can still help. and I am very gratefull for the help so far.

 

OK, can you boot the computer you're posting from to the Puppy LiveCD? This will eliminate any error in writing the disk. If you can't, burn another Puppy LiveCD at a lower speed.

If you can, the CD is ok, make sure all USB sticks and other peripherals are disconnected. If you can get into BIOS, set BIOS to defaults and turn off plug and play. One sure way to reset BIOS is to remove the CMOS battery for 30 seconds.

Sometimes certain hardware just doesn't like certain flavors of Linux. Mint Linux may be a good second choice.

The point of this is twofold, to see if the hardware other than the hard drive is OK and works. Secondly I would grab any data off this machine if it boots to a live CD. Since this is older hardware, second hand, I don't know how much you'll want to put into it. The machine is probably way past its expected life.

 

Puppy live CD booted up laptop (computer i'm posting from), but still freezes at the same point on desktop. Tried mint linux as well also booted up laptop but freezes on a grey screen on desktop. I'm kinda out of ideas.

Want to get desktop repaired as I can't replace it yet.

How hard would it be to reformat hard drive and start from scratch. I have 3 unused hard drives at the moment but as the computer was an all in one I don't know if itspossible.

Alternatively Was wanting to access comand prompt to run

Scandisc
Chkdsk
error checking
de frag
Test disk

Dont know if there is a way to do it without going into windows as safe mode doesn't want to work either at the moment, I think this is because acer recomended re setting to factory settings, but because it wont start up it can't finnish installing.

Final option I think is to re-install FAT16 and NTFS files. Which unfortunately I have no idea hw to run.

 

Something is stopping Linux from fully loading, possibly bad RAM. Can you burn MemTest and boot from that to run those tests? Be sure to get the right version 32 or 64 bit.

Also, if there is no data on the HD you care about and you have a legal copy of an OS, you might try an install.

 

have tried booting computer with mem test several times over now but it won't initialise anything. I think I got some major issue.

Any suggestions on how tostart from scratch and diagnose each component individually.

 

You got Memtest version 4.0, this supports 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs, right?
It was an .iso file that you burned to CD as bootable, right?

These CDs, and the Linux ones, do they boot correctly on another machine?

If you have some compatible RAM that works in another machine, I might swap it out with that and see if it corrects the problem.

 

All boot laptop with no problems, (Puppy linux live CD, Mint linux live CD and memtest 4) to be sure even booted laptop with memtest and left it run all night. no problems.

No matter what I try it gets to the microsoft corporation load bar and freezes.

 

You almost certainly have a hardware failure, RAM, CD/DVD player or Motherboard I would suspect. This is not to say the hard Drive is OK, but since we've taken it out of the loop it is not causing *this* problem.

I would start a new thread in the Hardware Forum and reference this thread, maybe someone can guide you better there...