AHHH computer turned off at mains!!!

cathy01

My darling son turned his computer ooff at the mains, a couple of times.Now it wont load,Im getting blue screen. It wont load on safe mode or anything.
Does anyone know how to fix it or will I just clear it /reformat it.If so, can anyone tell me how to as I cant get into start etc.
thanks,
cathy:o

Effluo

Yeah that's not a good thing.
I think the best thing you can hope for unless there's some valuable info on the pc is that some of the files on the hard-drive are corrupted!

tpotter

Is it Vista or XP?

Reformatting may in fact be the quickest and easiest way to fix it, but you could also try booting the Windows CD and using the Recovery Console, to repair the Master Boot Record or run chkdsk and see if there are any problems.

With that said, if the problem is a hardware one, than this might not be a good idea.

This explains how to access the recover console in XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058 Vista is similar, but you would boot with the CD and select the "Repair your computer" option

If so, can anyone tell me how to as I cant get into start etc.

Do you mean how to access you data files on the hard drive, so that you can save them before reformatting?

One option would be to use a Linux Live CD, which will let you explore your hard drive and backup files to a usb stick. You could also take the hard drive out and plug it into another computer and access it that way...

cathy01

hi, I have changed the start up so it runs from the cd rom , its not running the cr disc.I think I will just reformate it, if anyone knows how to ,can you let me know.Thanks for the advice , cathy

noodletop

cathy01 wrote: »

hi, I have changed the start up so it runs from the cd rom , its not running the cr disc.I think I will just reformate it, if anyone knows how to ,can you let me know.Thanks for the advice , cathy

put in your xp/ vista disk
when you switch on the pc hit delete or f8 to enter bios menu select the cd rom as first boot device in the settings menu f10 to save settings ,when machine reboots it will ask you to "press any key to boot from cd" install os and when complete return to bios and set hdd as first boot option.:D

Overheal

cathy01 wrote: »

My darling son turned his computer ooff at the mains, a couple of times.Now it wont load,Im getting blue screen. It wont load on safe mode or anything.
Does anyone know how to fix it or will I just clear it /reformat it.If so, can anyone tell me how to as I cant get into start etc.
thanks,
cathy:o

Well, Darling needs to learn a thing or two about PCs.

The Hard Disk reads and writes, just about all the damn time. Doing a Mains Shut off, you run the risk of interrupting the PC while it is trying to write to something important - like the Operating System. Then that data is lost, because it was probably in Limbo: Getting read in one place -> Put into RAM (which is wiped on power loss) -> to be put into another place on the Hard Drive.

So now you have a corrupt system file somewhere. Its not unusual or cruel at this stage to feed Darling some Jalapeno Oils: Spicy going in; Excruciating on the way out.

If you need to save any files I do reccomend you go get the Ultimate Boot CD: either burn it to a disk or get the USB version and boot to that. Then you can copy over family photos and such.

Or you can skip that whole step and wipe everything currently on C:\. Booting to the XP CD is pretty straightforward. Once you get in its a step by step process. Reformatting is the cleanest and will help your machine run better but you can also do a repair install if i recall correctly: this will overwrite all the OS files and leave all your documents relatively intact.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

cathy01

thansk for the help, I ended up getting a friend in and hes taken it away.
Nothing was working for me, but , again thanks for all the help,cathy