A good friend of mine asked if I could help a friend with her computer. This is what I know:
So here's the story on my computer. I had it on Saturday and tried turning it off and it was taking forever, so I held the power button and it went off. I turned it back on later and it worked fine. I went home for a day and left it on. When I came back the screen said Windows is having trouble starting up because of a power failure or something. Then it tells me to choose which Windows system to start, with Command Prompt and stuff like that. If I don't touch anything it counts down to when Windows will start, but no matter what the screen always goes black, then a blue HP screen shows up, it goes black again, and then goes back to the first page. It cycles like this over and over. I've pretty much tried everything. My brother is good with computers so I was on the phone with him trying to figure it out, but he said he's have to look at it. So if your roommate doesn't look at it I will have to go home for him to. Let me know if he is interested, and if he thinks there is anything he can do.
Unfortunately this is all I know at the moment. I'll probably go check it out next week; in the meantime, do you guys have any idea what the problem might be, or what I could try? I'm planning on bringing a couple XP disks to try a repair install, but that's all I can really think of. I don't really know enough about hardware to know if this could be a hardware problem. Any thoughts?
Sorry, I forgot to mention doing those things. From the sounds of it she's tried the various startup options, but I'll try them for myself as well. I was assuming worst case, where none of them work.
When you're doing the safe mode boot, it'll scroll the drivers as it loads them, if you watch quickly, you may be able to find a driver causing the reboot issue. I wish you luck.
You know I think I dealt with something like this before, but it was back in the days of 98 and I have no idea how I got it working. Might want to try powering it down, removing the power cable for a while, then trying to do soemthing with it. It sounds like it's gettings stuck somewhere, in a continuous loop. It also might be BSODing, but they have it set to auto-restart, so you could try switching that to not do that. That way you can get the error code if it is a BSOD.
Personally, I'm leaning toward software--I'd expect a hardware problem to manifest earlier in the boot sequence. There are only two hardware issues I can think of that would cause a fail on Windows startup: - Bad hard drive sectors in the midst of the Windows kernel. I would expect a repair install to go, "oh, those sectors are bad now, I'll move that data elsewhere," and clear the problem right up. - Some sort of video card problem where it freaks out when asked to run a high resolution. If the computer does not boot in VGA mode (it's on that same selection screen with Safe Mode), this probably isn't the problem, since VGA mode runs at 640x480. Option 2 is pretty unlikely anyway: I'd expect a video card failure to be all or nothing.
I'd bet dollars to donuts (that's about 5:3) that a repair install will solve it.
Yeah, I wondered if the "blue HP screen" was actually a BSOD. Is there any way to change that setting without actually booting Windows (in case I can't get any of the options to boot)?
The only reason I wondered if there was a hardware problem is because of the fact that it worked for a day and then showed some sort of "power failure" error. But I'm also betting something got screwed up when she forced it to power off in the middle of a shutdown.
Blue HP screen: I'm assuming that this is one of those OEM screens that comes up instead of the normal BIOS information. I concur about the BSOD/reboot assumption.
"power failure:" The startup mode select screen says something like, "windows did not boot up normally last time. This may be due to a power failure." I assumed that was what she meant.
That's an entirely different setting--it has to do with stopping when the BIOS encounters an error during boot. The BsoD settings, unfortunately, are changed within Windows:
1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties. 2. Click the Advanced tab. 3. Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box. 4.Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times. 5.Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.
A thought has occured to me: you might contact the sufferer and have her disconnect all her printers, ipods, etc. and try booting up. She presumably won't want to open the computer herself, but she can do that much at least, and it might just solve the problem.
I turn on my compy and 90% of the time it starts correctly, then sometimes when I turn it on, it goes to the blue HP screen, then brings up the command prompt with the 'Start Windows in safe mode, Safe mode with command prompt, safe mode with networking, last known good configuration, and start Windowd normally. No matter what I choose, it crashes and reboots itself to the SAME EXACT MENU WITH THE SAFE MODE OPTIONS.
I just get really pissed and scream at the top of my lungs by the 40th time I had to restart it, then after an hour it feels like booting normally.
- Have you run a checkdisk on your startup hard drive? - Have you added hardware that might be overworking your PSU? - Have you tried doing a repair install (as far as I know, this won't hurt anything if there's nothing wrong)? - Do you scream like that german kid with the slow computer?
To determine if its a hardware problem, you could simply boot into Knoppix or another Bootable linux. If it reboots then its hardware, if it boots cleanly, its software and it needs a repair install.
I've used PCLinuxOS to trouble shoot the problems. Also I like it cause I can browse SMB shares. And I was able to backup someones hard-drive to my PC so I could format there pc and then dump there data back on.
I am having the same problem that SwmnCello's friend was having. I am currently on my second computer, and my main computer is displaying that Windows did not start successfully. Then it tells you some things to do, then it gives you 5 options that you can do.
You can:
Safe MOde Safe Mode with Networking Safe Mode with Command Prompt
LAst KNown Good Configuartion
Start Windows Normally
I have tried them all and nothing seems to work. Some of the options will bring me to the Windows loading screen, but then it instantly flashes to a blue screen for less then a second and begins the process of shutting down and starting back up.
Anyway, by "power failure", maybe something in the motherboard isn't getting the right power, or something shorted due to a power surge, and isn't letting it start up. Is it possible that not booting could prevent that part from being permanently damaged, or killing other parts?
For all you others with problems, I'm not too sure how the CTA's want to do this, but I'm thinking that you should lay low until this is solved, and see if it helps you at all.
As others have said might be better to try a repair install first before trying anything to serious. To me it looks more like software problem too however, I don't think it is wise to rule out hardware failure. Seems like the RAM, power supply, mobo and processor are all functioning if its actually bluescreening like the women is saying. If the repair fails then might be better to strip all the data off the drive using a linux live distro. Then it might be worth downloading some hard drive diagnostic software to try to see whether a surge of her switching off has somehow fucked with hard drive. Most hard drive diagnostic software can be found at the hard drive manufacturer's website. Of course, since you won't know till you get there you could just download say Seagates, WD, Hitatci.
To the others who are having similar issues. Most of the time the Bluescreen can be fixed by doing a repair install. Not a reinstall. If you are having further issues after this then please make your own thread so its easier to keep track of the problem with an individual. Thank you kindly.
Most hard drive diagnostic software can be found at the hard drive manufacturer's website. Of course, since you won't know till you get there you could just download say Seagate, WD, Hitatchi.
This is really good advice. Also Maxtor!It's really eerie how many people are having this problem all at once. Have you guys just been putting up with it for a long time? It's totally okay to post a thread as soon as the problem comes up...
Surely it would be unlikely to overheat enough to turn it off after 10 seconds.....Unless you mean overheating when it was working and thus something has become damaged enough to stop it booting?
I had a friend who did the same thing the other day with exactly the same symptoms. Turned out they had corrupted the boot sector in this case. I booted from XP disk and went into recovery console and used the fixboot command and it confirmed it was corrupt , wrote a new boot sector and that was it, problem solved and saved having to reinstall/repair windows.
To the others who are having similar issues. Most of the time the Bluescreen can be fixed by doing a repair install. Not a reinstall. If you are having further issues after this then please make your own thread so its easier to keep track of the problem with an individual. Thank you kindly. 
