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Geek Culture / Computer Will Not Boot - *cries*

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soapyfish
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Location: Yorkshire, England
Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:20 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 01:09
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************* Computer Will Boot Now *****************

Evening chaps. Small problem. Computer won't work.

It was working fine earlier today but just now I've tried turning it on and the following happens.

A bit of diagnostic text pops up - see below for a very bad (good old white balance) but possibly useful photograph - nothing unusual here but I never bother to read it, maybe it means more to you than it does to me. Any hint as to what the problem might be?





The screen then clears and is empty except for a single, horizontal flashing cursor. That's it. Nothing will happen after that. I've left it for a good 30 minutes and it's still flashing at me.





I've tried poking random keys but the computer just beeps at me (one beep). I'm stumped.

The computer's running XP Home SP2. Maybe 4 years old. I've not upgraded or added anything since I bought it. My only guess is that at 4 years with almost daily use the hard drive may have packed in but I really don't have a clue and hope this isn't the problem. I can get to the BIOS but so far have not been able to get it to boot into safe mode. Probably because I've never had to before.

Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:25
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I work with these kind of stuff every day

But what I usually do here is to just replace the hard drive to see if it will boot now. As you are not (probably) using a server for storage and/or don't have a recent image of your hard disk, it wouldn't help much to change hard drive in this case.


At first look, it seems that the PC doesn't have anywhere to boot from.
Could be that it is trying to boot from your cd-rom.
Have you checked boot order in your BIOS to see if Hard drive is even listed?
Is the Hard drive activated in bios at all?

I'm afraid I can't think of anything else at the moment.

I allways afraided from a clowns. aww..
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soapyfish
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:33 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 00:35
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Hard Drive is listed in the boot order.

There are no usb keys/cd's/external drives in the computer.

I also tried moving the Hard Drive to the top of the boot order but still nothing.

I do have a reasonably recent backup (don't use this machine much so there's no important data on it. I hope.) so chucking the hard drive wouldn't be a massive problem, just one that I'd rather avoid.

I do not have a spare hard drive for testing at the moment. I may be able to blag a small one from college tomorrow.

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SpyDaniel
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:34
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No one can really help, unless we are there to see it ourselves. I don't know how good you are with computers, but check the bios.

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Sopo the tocho
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:37 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 00:40
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Quote: " what I usually do here is to just replace the hard drive to see if it will boot now. As you are not (probably) using a server for storage and/or don't have a recent image of your hard disk, it wouldn't help much to change hard drive in this case.
"


You are right, it seems like a Hardware problem.

This may sound stupid but do you have something connected to your computer through USB? if you have, disconnect it, disconnect all USB´s stuff.

When I had the old computer, that happened to me a few times... every time that happened to my computer, I disconnected everything (specially my Ipod), Rebooted and everything was fine again.

Hope that helps.


Intel Pentium core 2 duo T6600 2,6 mhz 4mb, 4 gb ram 600 mhz ddr2
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soapyfish
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:48
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Ok. Panic over for the time being. I've just turned the computer on and it's decided it wants to work again

Thanks for the suggestions Sopo and Lukas. I get the feeling this isn't the last I've seen of this particular problem.

Now seems like a good time to make another backup

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CattleRustler
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:49 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 00:51
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are you getting any sequence of beeps when the screen goes to the block-like shape (before you press any keys) ?
if so, note the long-short order

have you checked to see that nothing has become unseated like a mem stick or other card?

edit: we cross-posted, more reason now to suspect something unseated (intermittent hw fails vs boot ok) - check that out

My DBP plugins page is now hosted [href]here[/href]
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soapyfish
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 00:57 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 00:57
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I'll have a look see.

Although I have not added anything since I bought the computer I have opened it up for the odd poke about every once in a while when it seemed like a good idea.

I'll have another poke about and see if anything looks a bit wobbly.

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hessiess
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 01:07 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 01:08
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get dammn small linux or puppy linux live cd, and see if you can boot that? it would prove if the hd is busted or curruped

learn blender, you will never regret it.

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Raven
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 04:58
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actually, the simplist test for HDD failiar is just to take it out.
if he got a message saying "Boot Device not Found" or such; then the BIOS is fine. And the problem probably lies with the boot device, but it could possibly be that the UDMA/SATA lead has basically burnt out (is is loose as CR suggests). If that is also fine then the problem is with the HDD itself.
This in itself could be a host of problems, that don't necessarily mean it's actually damaged.

There was a time when a particularly nasty virus infected my MBR that caused an intermitant issue like hang-boots.

If not then it's dying on you.

Also, make sure that your bios and video are NOT shadowed. God knows why they still have this option on motherboards, as it causes more problems than is worth.. always has because current OSs and Hardware are designed around the 640k Spec; and unless specifically designed otherwise (aka custom firmware and *nix OS) then will cause issues with it.

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Osiris
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 05:07
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Sorry if im hijacking but ive got a question as well. My computer worked fine up until I put it in my office room instead of my bedroom. Then it started becoming slower and slower, then it hit me with a floppy drive error and would not boot up, so I took it out and checked it out, placed in a new one, and now it wont even boot up. I mean you can hear the CPU fan kick in for about half a second then it does not do anything else. Any suggestions for my computer troubles?

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Raven
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 05:16
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sounds like loose wires or you've accidentally messed about inside and caused a static shock destroying something.

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Osiris
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 05:21
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Well, it worked fine until I put it in that room. I thing the power strip is messed up and surges or something.

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Eric T
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 07:36
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Last time I got that, it was just the bios having a problem with the CD I had in the CD-Drive. It wanted to boot from it for some odd reason, so it just sat and kept trying to boot from it. I almost got pissed till I noticed the CD light blinking constantly, heh.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 09:19
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Quote: "get dammn small linux or puppy linux live cd"
Yeah, one of my laptops has just gone the same way. I've had desktops that just need to be taken apart and fiddling with the components (making sure they are secure in their slots) and they work fine, but laptops (esp this damn one) are normally not so easy. Anyways, safe mode doesn't work, DOS HD diagnostic boot disks etc seem to reboot after a set amount of scanning time etc. In the end I'm booting it from CD with Ubuntu. Doesn't need the HD and the computer works fine. Now copying all the important files off the HD. Annoyingly every now and again a folder completely freezes the copy process for a while or comes up with an error. Definitely the HD being a bit stuffed. Slowly slowly catchy monkey...

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 09:29
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Try booting from your Windows CD, and then tell it to repair windows.

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SimSmall
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 10:24
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Quote: "I've just turned the computer on and it's decided it wants to work again"


We had one like this, ironically it would be the one that wasn't home built.

It had the exact same problem with the exact same bios and also froze at "Mouse initialized". Like you've discovered the only cure we found was to leave it for about an hour.

That computer's long since been relegated to spare parts though. Yours isn't an HP Pavilion is it? It gave us that many problems, that if we ever BUY a computer again (as opposed to build one), it certainly won't be an HP
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Lukas W
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Posted: 17th Sep 2007 12:53 Edited at: 17th Sep 2007 12:56
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I've only had one problem with one of my computers I've owned/built.

It would run perfectly fine until you start an application and the computer freeze with a strange endless beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep coming from the speakers.

After I changed RAM and Hard Drive, the computer runs fine now.

Oh and the first one I built didn't start at all
Turned out I had positioned the 20pin Power supply cable in the wrong position on a 24pin power supply cable reciever on the motherboard. (don't know the word for that cable/reciever).

I allways afraided from a clowns. aww..
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