My Computer Will Barily Start Up.

Sup geeks, I have a biggy for you today. My Sony Vaio (desktop) just wore out, and whenever I click the "on" button, it turns on as normal. But when it gets past disk check, a blue message comes up for about 0.5 of a second, and then the computer restarts. Before I had this problem, I could get past the disk check, but everything was completely blurred, and there was wavy horazonal lines everywhere and it was obviosly impossible to work with that on the screen. (the wavy lines happend for about 6 times, before the computer started to restart itself.

Before I had this problem, I was installing Nvidia Drivers, after they misteriously "disapeard" from my hardware. They were working before for months.

Sony Vaio 2001 Desktop Computer
128mb pc-133 sdram
64mb nvidia MX/MX 400
870MHz
40gb HD

Thanks for any help!

BTW, is a system reformat involved?

 

What OS?

Reformat might not help at all, since boot time errors can be OS-related or hardware-related.

Try booting into Safe Mode (press F8 immediately after the disk check ends). That might let you get into Windows, albiet in a crippled form.

Can't help much more than that without knowing the OS, unfortunately.

 

Windows XP, Pentium III

P.S. I tried Safe Mode, I think it's the same problem (as far as I can remember)

 

Hm. Well, let's first assume that it's a software problem. They're more likely to occur, and easier to fix.

When you say "disk check", was it doing something like [utl=http://www.updatexp.com/images/chkdskbluelge.jpg]this[/url]? Was it doing it every time you booted your system? And was that normal for the life of the system? If that was normal, how were you turning your system off: telling Windows to Shutdown, or just pressing the power button?

The most useful thing you will need to help fix this is going to be a Windows XP CD. It can be an upgrade disc or a regular disc. Of course, most PC manufacturers like HP, Dell, Sony, etc. do not include a proper Windows XP disc. They give you their silly restore discs (and sometimes they don't even give you those!). If you haven't got a proper Windows XP disc, then there's not as much you can do to fix it yourself except to try the restore CDs (which will erase your data). Without the disc, I'd probably just take the system to a repair shop.

Here's the firwst thing to try. Insert your Windows XP CD and boot to the Recovery Console. (Just complete steps 1-4 of the first section.) Note: If no installation of Windows is detected, or you can't log on to the console, let me know (and detail what happened).

Once you're in the recovery console, run this command:
chkdsk c: /r

The command will invoke the disk check program you'f familiar with, and will tell it to exhaustively check the system and recover any readable information. It will take up to an hour to run, depending on whether or not it finds any damage. If it's gone for several hours without progressing, your hard drive is probably damaged beyond repair. Also, take a look at the first line of the output. It should say "The type of the file system is NTFS." or "The type of the file system is FAT32.". Let me know which one it says (probably FAT32). The output will also eventually list a bunch of informaton about your disk. One of which will say "#### KB in bad sectors.". If that's 0, that's great. If it's a big number (close to a million) then your hard drive is failing.

[You should also be using bootcfg here, but that's a very advanced command that I'm not comfortable suggesting without being present to run myself. You might very easily make your system unbootable.]

If the above doesn't work, then you can try a repair install of Windows. That will reinstall Windows and leave your files intact. Any programs you had will no longer be installed (although the files will remain).

If, at any point in the above, your system crashes or unexpectedly reboots, stop and come back.

Good luck!

 

/quote When you say "disk check", was it doing something like [utl=http://www.updatexp.com/images/chkdskbluelge.jpg]this[/url]? Was it doing it every time you booted your system? And was that normal for the life of the system? If that was normal, how were you turning your system off: telling Windows to Shutdown, or just pressing the power button? /quote

You know, the blue screen...Press any button to continue in 10, 9, 8...etc.

Yes it was doing every time

Power Button, but I didn't shut it down, I only restarted it from the power button.


And ill try the recovery thing now...