PC startsup but monitor doesnt...

[Ginza]

Right this afternoon my computer just cut out. I am on my fathers laptop by the way.

It said it was a problem with N Vidia graphics card or whatever and i downloaded an update. No problem there...

It then said i needed to restart, fine i thought.

It switches on but doesnt load up XP.

The screen comes up with saying it hasnt shut down properly do you want to go in to safe mode, run last known settings that worked or run windows normally however none of them work when i try. It restarts and then xp flashes on then a blue screen shows for like a second.

Now i have all my work on the computer so formatting is not an option. What can anyone advise suggest? Do i need to look in to these places that specialise in getting your data back?

Its got all my English Language A2 Coursework, Media Modules and pr0n on it amongst other things.

[Firsty]

See this is what partitioning is for

I dunno why this is happening so I'm no help with a proper fix.
But, you could always pop in another hard drive and try a reinstall with that. Then copy files off the old one. If you...catch my drift.

[Ciaran]

I'm not sure about the startup problem but it sounds like all your data is ok. So ,before trying any risky fixes you might want to plug the HDD into another PC and get all your files back.

[Ginza]

How? Theres like 30GB of stuff maybe.

[kimenon69]

Dont you have an XP rescue disk that came with the computer?

[Ciaran]

Sorry to sound sarcastic but just find a friend with a big HDD and lots of space left and transfer it.

[FelixofMars]

[edit] due to repeating advice..doh!

Well keep us posted, for any more advice

[Tom Salter]

Put a windows XP disk in and get it to boot.

Press option R for repair.

Repair the whole thing and see if that helps.

Or relpace the dodgy file that shows up on the blue screen using the recovery console.

[Ginza]

Nice one. Need to find my XP disk now which might take a hell of a long time seeing as my room is teh ****.

[Sarkster]

Dunno if this helps any, but when I had an office server (NT4) do a meltdown on me one sunday afternoon (wouldnt boot) I just installed NT4 again, but not over the top of it; to a different directory instead. If you can do this, then you can work out what was causing the problem, and try and fix your original installation, or failing that, install all the programs you want to your new installation, and delete the old windows dir?

Just a thought

[Tom Salter]

You could do that, but it's a pain in the arse as it ****s around with your Program Files directory.

[Ginza]

Right i have found my XP CD and promptly put that firstly in my normal cd drive and then in my dvd drive. Suffice to say nothing happened on either occasions and there are some slight scratches to the XP disc so i am clutching at straws here and am going to send the XP disc away to somewhere who offers the service of skimming the disc and getting rid of the scratches. Hopefully then the cd will load up and i will be able to do a repair.

Cheers.

[goldbricker]

You know you have to change the bios to boot directly from the CD don't you?

[Ginza]

Well i didnt but i do now

Ill see if i can work it out how to do it now.

[Tom Salter]

Aye, you didn't expect it to happen by magic did you?

Go into the bios, and set first boot device to CD-Rom.