Windows not starting/booting sometimes?

Hello, I came accross your forum and decided to give it a try since I
saw the helpful people posting in other threads. I've asked this
question in many other forums but no one seems to know whats wrong.

For a few days now my PC would start and get to a black screen with a
blinking "_" in the upper left corner. I would turn it off then turn it
on again and it would work. I figured I'd just clean the dust out of it
and do a factory restore later on (which I did).

But since yesterday, I've had to do 4 or 5 restores to set it to
factory condition. It gets to the point where I get to that screen and I
wait 5 or 10 minutes, then the screens says "fail to boot disk, please
insert disk" or something. so I place in the disk that my PC promted to
make when i first got it (for restoring and repairing it and such) and
then everything works again. but eventually with all the automatic
updates i have to restart of course, and it starts up again fine, but
after about 2 or 3 restarts it fails again.

Do I have a corrupted OS or something? I've reset my PC to factory
condition twice before its had this problem. And its never given me
trouble. A little info that may or may not be important is that its an
HP computer, I've it for about a year and a half, and I play a lot of PC
games.

Also, when it fails or is going to boot, pressing F8 does nothing. But
after a factory reset, it seems to work fine and I can start windows
normally.

thanks in advance for the help.


--
Jinxxed0

In article <>,
Jinxxed0 <> wrote:
>
>But since yesterday, I've had to do 4 or 5 restores to set it to
>factory condition. It gets to the point where I get to that screen and I
>wait 5 or 10 minutes, then the screens says "fail to boot disk, please
>insert disk" or something. so I place in the disk that my PC promted to

Sounds like a failing drive. Are there errors about bad
sectors and such in the event log?

I would think hardware 1st,

If you feel comfortable open the case and one at a time
remove and reseat the hard drive cables. Then do same for
the power cables. If fact I would do same for all cables and
cards. One at a time REMOVE and RESEAT. Don't just
try to push in/on.

"Jinxxed0" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Hello, I came accross your forum and decided to give it a try since I
> saw the helpful people posting in other threads. I've asked this
> question in many other forums but no one seems to know whats wrong.
>
> For a few days now my PC would start and get to a black screen with a
> blinking "_" in the upper left corner. I would turn it off then turn it
> on again and it would work. I figured I'd just clean the dust out of it
> and do a factory restore later on (which I did).
>
> But since yesterday, I've had to do 4 or 5 restores to set it to
> factory condition. It gets to the point where I get to that screen and I
> wait 5 or 10 minutes, then the screens says "fail to boot disk, please
> insert disk" or something. so I place in the disk that my PC promted to
> make when i first got it (for restoring and repairing it and such) and
> then everything works again. but eventually with all the automatic
> updates i have to restart of course, and it starts up again fine, but
> after about 2 or 3 restarts it fails again.
>
> Do I have a corrupted OS or something? I've reset my PC to factory
> condition twice before its had this problem. And its never given me
> trouble. A little info that may or may not be important is that its an
> HP computer, I've it for about a year and a half, and I play a lot of PC
> games.
>
> Also, when it fails or is going to boot, pressing F8 does nothing. But
> after a factory reset, it seems to work fine and I can start windows
> normally.
>
> thanks in advance for the help.
>
>
> --
> Jinxxed0

You have either a failing hard drive or a failing power supply.
If you can boot the computer at all immediately copy all your documents, etc
to CD or DVD or whatever.
There are many software programs you can download to test the hard drive:
they are usually very rapidly accurate.
If the hard drive is failing it is not difficult to install a replacement.
There are many programs to "clone" the data on your old hard drive to your
new one. Some of them even work.
If your hard drive passes all tests, as I suspect it will, the problem is
your power supply. Most off the shelf boxes come with horrible power
supplies.
If you are not experienced at replacing the power supply and rerunning
associated cables then take your machine to a repair shop.

i unplugged and repluged the stuff inside my PC after it failed to start
again, and it started up okay this time. Although it'll probably not
start again after a shut down.

@pupick, i googled for programs to test my harddrive, but i cant find
any results. and would it really be my power supply? i've had the PC for
over a year and a half now and havent had a problem like this yet


Edit: theres a second harddrive in my PC, is there a way for me to
switch to it? I have no idea how to do that.


--
Jinxxed0

"Jinxxed0" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> i unplugged and repluged the stuff inside my PC after it failed to start
> again, and it started up okay this time. Although it'll probably not
> start again after a shut down.
>
> @pupick, i googled for programs to test my harddrive, but i cant find
> any results. and would it really be my power supply? i've had the PC for
> over a year and a half now and havent had a problem like this yet
>
>
> Edit: theres a second harddrive in my PC, is there a way for me to
> switch to it? I have no idea how to do that.
>
>
> --
> Jinxxed0

Jinxxed0--

Who is the maker of your box? With that it is probably easy to find
specific tests for your HD (often key combos) like Ctrl+Alt+D. Keep in
mind that HD failure may not be the only reason you had a problem--others
mentioned could be and that these HD tests are between 75% and 90% accurate.

Seatools is one way to test your HD
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...loads/seatools

I have had a HD diagnosed as "failing" on a Dell via Ctr+Alt+D and did a
bootrec series of commands and after that it last for a year. I don't
think the bootrec commands which don't impact the HD of course, did it, but
my point is that HDs can gain electromagnetism. There are also the hail
mary plays of believe it or not
a) taking out the HD if it is Dx'd as failing and thumping it against a
cusioned surface
b) putting the HD and cables in a zip lock bag and putting them in your
freezer for an hour

The object of these last ditch moves is to regain enough electromagnetism to
back up your data, etc. if you have not done so. Unless you're backed up,
if you get a Dx of a "failing HD", I would back up and consider that the HD
could fail at any time.


If you truly determine that your HD is failing and want to switch to the
other HD, then

Make sure that your HD you want to boot from is detected in your bios setup.
Depending on your pc, you might want to make the HD one HD Master and one HD
slave, or simply remove one of the HDs and make it cable select, and odds
are that it is cable select out of the box.

If you're not familiar with this, it's simple enough. On the back of a HD
are a group of pin connectors, and there is a small and I mean small,
object on the back of the pins that is usually made of a rubber substance.

All HDs and optical drives have diagrams as to the cableling, and some are
easy to read and see, and some stupidly are not. Often people use the
second drive for storage, when it's working, and when they don't have them
together configured as some type of array.

HD Jumper Configurations

http://studynotes.net/images/seagate-jumpers.gif

Also your HD manufacturer usually has good illustrations and directions as
to how to cable on their website.

CH







CH

I have seen this exact condition whenever there is a primary partition on
more than one hard drive and both of the primary partitions have the boot
flag set. Only one primary partition can be set as bootable at a given time.

The last time I worked on a similar problem the person had, at one time, had
a second operating system on the second drive. Even though he subsequently
removed the 2nd O/S the partition remained tagged as bootable. Only now
there was nothing there to boot. So, the computer hung on the screen that
you are seeing.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"Jinxxed0" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Hello, I came accross your forum and decided to give it a try since I
> saw the helpful people posting in other threads. I've asked this
> question in many other forums but no one seems to know whats wrong.
>
> For a few days now my PC would start and get to a black screen with a
> blinking "_" in the upper left corner. I would turn it off then turn it
> on again and it would work. I figured I'd just clean the dust out of it
> and do a factory restore later on (which I did).
>
> But since yesterday, I've had to do 4 or 5 restores to set it to
> factory condition. It gets to the point where I get to that screen and I
> wait 5 or 10 minutes, then the screens says "fail to boot disk, please
> insert disk" or something. so I place in the disk that my PC promted to
> make when i first got it (for restoring and repairing it and such) and
> then everything works again. but eventually with all the automatic
> updates i have to restart of course, and it starts up again fine, but
> after about 2 or 3 restarts it fails again.
>
> Do I have a corrupted OS or something? I've reset my PC to factory
> condition twice before its had this problem. And its never given me
> trouble. A little info that may or may not be important is that its an
> HP computer, I've it for about a year and a half, and I play a lot of PC
> games.
>
> Also, when it fails or is going to boot, pressing F8 does nothing. But
> after a factory reset, it seems to work fine and I can start windows
> normally.
>
> thanks in advance for the help.
>
>
> --
> Jinxxed0

i did a diagnostic tes on the harddrive and it said internal error on
half the tests.
now my computer wont start even after a restore (im on my mom laptop).

I;m guessing now that its a harddrive error. I also may have been
mistaken about having two harddrives, but rather have one harddrive
split in two? my hardware knowlegde is pretty limited and doesnt go
beyond installing gfx cards and ram.

It seems like buying a harddrive is the best solution now. but if it
isnt, maybe someone can tell me? I have no problem buying a new
harddrive at all, unless i wont help or i theres another choice.


--
Jinxxed0

Jinxxed0 <> wrote:

>
>i did a diagnostic tes on the harddrive and it said internal error on
>half the tests.
>now my computer wont start even after a restore (im on my mom laptop).
>
>I;m guessing now that its a harddrive error. I also may have been
>mistaken about having two harddrives, but rather have one harddrive
>split in two? my hardware knowlegde is pretty limited and doesnt go
>beyond installing gfx cards and ram.
>
>It seems like buying a harddrive is the best solution now. but if it
>isnt, maybe someone can tell me? I have no problem buying a new
>harddrive at all, unless i wont help or i theres another choice.

Yes, by all means buy a new hard drive.

thanks for the help everyone.


--
Jinxxed0