Laptop won't start up

Queen-Mise

I was uninstalling some things earlier of my laptop, i had taken off yahoo toolbar and was in the process of uninstalling Napster when setup.exe stopped working. i shut down and try to restart, hoping whatever bug would work itself out.
only problem is, the laptop won't restart. i am getting the error message

Windows failed to tart. a recent hardware or software change might be the cause. to fix the problem, its asking for windows installation disc, which i don't have as all the software was preinstalled.
'An error occusrred while attempting to read the boot configuration data'.

is there anything i can do to fix this at home

Alanstrainor

Moved from Laptops.

James T Kirk

Did you try booting into Safe Mode (pressing F8 key at start up) queen-mise?

Queen-Mise

James T Kirk wrote: »

Did you try booting into Safe Mode (pressing F8 key at start up) queen-mise?

nope no luck, won't go into safe mode. it keeps going into windows boot manager - telling us windows is not able to start.

is this is shop job

James T Kirk

Have you any kind of boot discs lying around? Or bring it to your local tech-dude. Wouldn't worry anyways... lost count of the laptops that I've thrown in the sea.

johnmd

If all else fails.
Please refer to the vendors manual for specific instructions on how to take out your hard disk.
Turn your laptop upside down,should be a small disk symbol,unscrew the three or four screws holding this in place,take out the hard drive.
Put it into an external USB 2.5" external caddy (about 35.00 pc world.peats etc),plug drive into a friends machine and copy your files from it.
At least you'll get your data back if nothing else.

RE insert into latop.
At this point you have two options if don't have a copy of windows.
1.Buy a copy of XP/Vista Home or Pro and see if you can upgrade the existing installation,upon boot,or do a full re install.Then copy your files back onto the reloaded machine.
Burn to DVD etc.
2.If you don't want to part with any additional cash, and there's nothing more than email,word docs and internet usage required initially.Consider downloading and installing a Linux based O/S ,Centos,Unbuntu etc,burn onto cd and load onto your laptop. -Note requires some technical knowledge,as there may be driver issues etc etc.But is free,however takes time to learn and get used to.Copy your files back.

Bodan

You will need a vista DVD to repair it. I lifted this solution from another website:

11. I tried booting it with the Vista DVD inserted.
It prompts me to choose an OS to start and displays "Microsoft Windows Vista" as the choice.
Upon pressing ENTER, it takes me to Step 1.

12. I changed the boot sequence to boot up from the Dvd drive. It starts up the Windows installation upon reboot.
Upon getting the Vista menu, I choose to Repair my computer.

13. A message comes up that says:
"Windows found problems with your computer's startup options.
Do you want to apply repairs and restart your computer?"

click on "Repair and restart".

The main point here is that you want the DVD to see your installed OS and then choose Repair and restart.

<snip> Please don't mention possibly dodgy downloads

Capt'n Midnight

sounds like the registry files are iffy
check that the hard drive is ok using diagnostics - some pc's have this as an option on bootup by pressing F12, some don't

What make / model of laptop - someone may know the recovery procedure for it , if it has a hidden partition

are you using Vista or XP ?

James T Kirk

Apologies for my 'stoopid' post above. Get a copy of KNOPPIX. Boot with that.

but43r

Saund like registry allright.
Very good peace of software that I allways use is Spotmau PowerSuite™
Used it 4 times so far and worked all the time(had similar problems). It's a bootable CD. No need to reinstall the OS and it takes only about 2 minutes to fix the problem.