problem with windows starting

[barricades]

Hey there, I've had a hoke through the forum and I've seen that a lot of people have issues with windows not starting, but no-one had the exact symptoms that I have had, hence this new thread.

Basically yesterday I shut my computer down as normal but when I turned it on again last night it got as far as the windows logo and then just froze there. After a while I hit the power button to turn it off and try again. This time it went to the screen where it offers you options to start in safe mode/with network/start windows normally etc... tried to start windows normally and again it only got as far as the windows logo then stopped. Tried safe mode, which just thru up a list of things and then froze. Tried the other options, same thing. Then all of a sudden whilst trying to start the 'puter again it decides to go into some sort of self checking mode. It took half an hour to go through this process where the computer said lots of things about not being able to read files, then it said it was fixing some things, then it said it was deleting some things.

I thought this was fixing the problem. But now when i turn it on it just immediately goes to the start in safemode/start windows normally screen and no matter what i choose it freezes on that screen.

I've tried inserting my windows disk and tried to boot from that, but it just almost immediately goes to the safemode/windows normally screen. It doesn't even sound like it is giving itself a chance to boot from cd.

Is there anything else I can try? I really don't want to loose whats on my hard drive.

thanks in advance

[Rik_]

It sounds like your machine is suffering from data corruption. This can be caused by many different things. The most common causes of this type of problem are, improper shutdown, malware, faulty ram, faulty hard drive, and heat.

It will take some figuring to get to the root cause of this particular problem.

To boot from cd, you must set your cd drive as first boot option in your bios. Have a check in your mobo (motherboard) manual.

[barricades]

Hey there

Thanks for the reply

I've been following some things I have read here and elsewhere. I've got the OS ubuntu [Lynux based, can operate as an operating system on a cd drive) running on a cd at the moment and thats allowing me to see files on the HD and attempt to copy some over to an external HD.

It seems to take a long time to copy the files over and a good few of them are saying they are having a problem copying. These are mostly photoshop files or files from folders to do with hewlet packard for some reason.

From what I'm describing do the knowledgable amongst you know whether this is more likely to be a software prob or am I looking at buying a new hard drive?

thanks

[caperjack]

sound like a bad harddrive to me

[Rik_]

Without some testing, its near impossible to tell what the case is.

It can be caused by heat, electrical instability (PSU or mains fluctuations), failing hardware, bad cables, the list goes on....