24 replies to this topic

[C2C]

Well if this topic does not belong here, please feel free to delete/move it. Here's how the story went: My friend's computer crashed on him and he asked me to come over and have a look. So I did and here are some errors that appear:

Boot cd-rom
Boot cd-rom
Cannot load press ctrl+alt+delete to restart

After I restart it the same thing happens all over again. (Note: the message is very similiar to that above but I didn't write the exact message down). I tried the restore disk and then that too did not work even after I log into windows, the computer freezes and the message above appears again. When I load the computer again, this message appears:

The following file is corrupted or missing
<windows root> \system32\hal.dll

Well now I have no clue what to do. I believe the problem is in the hard drive but I'm not sure so I brought my friend's hard drive home to check it out and when I put it in my old computer, it said, "Operating system not found on any devices. Press any key and try again"

So...what do I do now? I'm totally lost. Any help or comment would be greatly appreciated.

[Inspiron]

This type are my favourite questions...

As for your question, the operating system seemed to crash already...

If its Windows XP, try booting from the Windows XP disc itself and do a repair using the Repair Console...
However, you will need to know what's really happening to cure with the recovery console or else it may worsen the situation...

Best solution for me, I would format the computer...
This would clear off all OS settings and reconfigure from fresh...
However, your data in the Root Drive will be erased as well..
But this is very effective for computers that has a partition drive for OS and another partition drive for data...
This is how I manage my computer too...

Hope that helps...

[C2C]

Yeah I'm sure the hard drive is messed up already so I wanted to format it (since that's the only thing I can do now I think) but the problem is I cannot boot from cd-rom either! I tried to boot from a floppy start up disk but that didn't work out either. Currently I am trying to make it in a cd-rom disk and see if that has any effect.

[shigajet]

The same thing happened to my "old clunker" laptop (running Windows ME) earlier this year. Every time I tried to boot it up, it kept going to the scan disk and restarted the scan endlessly until I became fed up and turned off the machine. Luckily, I didn't a whole lot of software to re-install, so I formatted the computer and began anew. Doesn' t seem to have any problems now.

[C2C]

I cannot format the computer at all. The cd rom does not boot. The command prompt would not let me open fdisk and format. The window xp would not boot. Nothing works. I'm sure the files on the hard drive is erased but I can't even boot any disk...this is irritating.

[Styx]

If you're not able to boot from either CD or floppy, could be that your BIOS is messed up, or a virus. try putting it in your old computer as a slave, and reformat.

[psychiccyberfreak]

Something similar happened to my laptop. The graphics card fan would not spin. What I did was in my computer, I took it under the hood, and had to reconect the wire to the motherboard. Now it works fine. So anotherwords, try checking that everything is plugged in inside of the computer. for your os problem, try copying all of your documents onto a CD and then wipe the drive clean, format it, re-install the os, and load your files back on with the CD. Dont use the CD for programs, though, only for documents. If all else fails, get a good computer. If you get a dell though, do NOT use their coustomer service. Either that or try using a computer repair shop. They do this stuff for a living, so they will definatly fix it. Hope that helped you.

[C2C]

Well I talk to one of my friends and he advised me to put my friend's hard drive into my other computer in the living room and use it as a slave drive and reformat. He also advised me to changed the IDE cable just in case. psychiccyberfreak - Everything is plugged in correctly from ide to everything.

[BuffaloHelp]

Is it possible that the CD-ROM drive is bad? I would need more information of the computer’s specification. But try this in the mean time. Take out all hardware expect for CPU, RAM, video (if not built-in), known working CD-ROM drive and the hard-drive. That’s it! Set it from your BIOS to boot from CD-ROM drive. And see if you can repeat either the restore console or install fully. Keep us in update of your progress.

Good luck.

[C2C]

Well computer specs are as followed:

1 ghz proccess from Pentium
Memory is more than 512 (didn't check)

I also have a spare dvd rom that I can put in or I can just take out my main computer's cd-rw drive and try if that works or not. I don't want to put my friend's hard drive into my main computer because I'm afraid it might jack it up. I still got about a week or so to see what happens.