My husband was doing a system restore when we lost power, now when he starts his computer you get nothing.....it's been way too long ago since I did any troubleshooting a operating system so I need some help.....please, or I have a very nice heavy paperweight. It's a Dell system 8200, P4, Win XP.

It starts up, you get the Dell screen does the keyboard check, goes to a black and white screen with, 'windows did not start sucessfully', there are some options and 'start windows normally' if selected, it restarts everything and you finally end up with a blank black screen, and a white arrow cursor, nothing else. So any ideas how I can get this thing to least give me the windows sart up screen?

Or can I fix it through DOS? should I give up, or pay the computer store guys the $200 to fix it? Any input appreciated....

Message edited on: 12/30/2004 05:55

Sounds like you might have corrupted the boot sector of the hard-drive. If you have a windows cd, you might try booting from that... Otherwise, you might have to do a full reinstall. :^(

I thought of that, but the cd, 3.5 and dvd drives aren't reading anything...I put the WinXP cd in and nothing happens....

Attached Link: http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?cat=sup&subcat=dkb&c=us&l=en&s=gen&k=boot%20up%20black%20screen

When the bios starts up (the Dell screen) it'll say something like press F2 to change boot order. Try setting that to the cd drive's letter. Otherwise, your hard drive may have crashed...

When you start up, you should have a black screen with white text. The text won't stay there for very long, but you should see a keystroke option for trouble shooting. It's probably one of the 'F' keys. When you find it, you should get a menu giving you several boot options. Pick the one that says something like 'boot from last correct setup'..... you should be able to pickup where you was before the crash.

It may just be a bad sector in the boot sector, a couple bad SYS files could easily cause this, especially on a propriatory system(Dell).

if the cd doesn't work after setting it 1st in the boot order in the bios, you can also try using a 3.5 disk for 1st boot device. If it's a cd-enabled bootdisk then you should be able to see the cd-drive again when booting from that 3.5 disk and then you can re-install windows.

Aye, RayRaz has the right of it... Are you using XP Pro or XP Home? The fact that you can even get into XP boot options means that not ALL of the data on the system has been damaged, hopefully it's only the boot sectors and in that case all you really need to do is get it to launch XP Setup. Once that happens, either it will launch into XP, although many of the setting may revert to stock, but your data, registry, and programs should remain intact. My point it, your files are more than likely NOT yet lost! Good luck, Zhann, and in the future stay away from proprietary boxes and get yourself an Uninterruptible Power Supply, they are fairly cheap and even the worst ones will give you a good half hour to shut down your PC before things go awry... (whatever you do, just don't format your drive yet! There may still be hope...)

Geezzzz, Zhann, I dont know what to say that hasnt already been said. Just want to wish you good luck on this. Got my fingers crossed.

If worse come to worse and you cant get it, Unplug your system, Open the computer. Unplug your harddrive or harddrives, then restart the computer with the harddrives unpluged. You should get a bios menu when it starts up, Once you get the bios's setting to come up, Set the bios for the CD-Rom to boot up first after that stick your windows cd in, now shut down your system. Reconnect your Harddrive, or Harddrives. now start your computer, you should now be able to do two things, reinstall windows, repair windows, That should fix your issure, it sounds scary but its not, and it wont take long to do :) I had to do this myself a few months ago :) I hope you have some stuffed backed up if the repair dont work, it sounds like you might have to do a full reinstall. Peace Scott

Have faith :) Win XP (much as I hate to admit it) is extremely hard to permanantly break. I've had to fix various problems over the last year or so (hard drive letters changing, corrupted boot sectors, windows just plain screwed up) and I still haven't had to format. If you have access to another computer, you can download the Win XP setup files for floppy (run over 6 discs). It takes a while to load, but it should allow you to access the windows installation, which has repair capabilities.

It's F8 (me son is back from Iraq, and I spent a lot of time helping him get desert dust out of it..;) been there..you'll come up in 'safe mode'. There are several options..try 'safe mode with Dos' first, check the hard drive.. (old commands, like dir /w, chkdsk might still work)..then if that's ok, the files might be all right. You can do this again, and then choose 'safe mode'..see if you can get around. You should have a dell disk with the repair option, as mentioned above. On some OS's, (NT) I think you have the option to run the last known good version.

Message edited on: 12/30/2004 09:39

Most of the important stuff has been said...but to echo some encouragement, you're files probably ARE still there and retrievable with a little perseverance.

Start WinXP in SafeMode(F8)then see do the Normal ERROR checking then run Disk defrag...If that doesnt work then on restart go back into Safe Mode then you can get to the Restore Utility and try resetting the restore Point Back...If this doesnt work then you need to wipe out and re-install XP...You might be able to try and REPAIR windows...Everybody has pretty much hit it on the head...At worst Take the hard drive out and Put into another machine and Grab the Data by useing GHOST and then Format that Puppy and start over....

I have a copy of my Wins ME/OS in a patitioned hard drive and a rescue boot floppy which gives me access to the partition. one of the options is to re-install windows over the top of the existing install without losing any other data. In your case with XP I would Boot up in "Safe Mode" then do a system restore. I am surprised that it did'nt auto boot in Safe Mode in those circumstances,mine does when wins does'nt load properly. Cheers 8) GG

I have heard somewhere(Maybe at the computer store I work at Partime)that if the Hal.DLL gets corrupted iXP wont start up in safe Mode automatically you have to do it manually...But I am more then Likely wrong as usual....

This may sound very odd but bear with me,........did you have any USB devices(card readers, hubs, external HD's etc.) connected to the system at the time ? If so have you tried to reboot without the devices connected ?

Thanks for all the suggestions, I will say that I tried to set the bootup to the CD drive, shut the comp off and restarted with the CD in, but it refuses to read it....My guess is that hubby deleted some important files prior to the system restore. And when he went to restore and the power went out, the files were corrupted or lost, and that's preventing all the normal avenues of bootup from working, but I plan on trying everyones suggestions, the 'leave no stone unturned' kinda thing, since alot of my work is backed up on his computer (my Bryce scene files, C4D, my models and all my Bryce mats) I'll let you know how it goes.....uuuggh, I hate this type if thing....

Last thought: swift kick on its keister.

Well, no luck, however, I sucessfully rebooted from the cd, went through all the WinXP setup and installation, I thought 'yea...it's working, whoohoo', it completed sucessfully, but on the next start up, no WinXP greeting window to log on, just blank black screen, boohoo, I must say I'm stumped.....I think we're going to just trash this drive and buy a new harddrive for that comp, geez I hate it when computers get pissy....

Are there files on the drive that you need? If so, slave the drive to one of your other computers, and pull the files right off! Then you could format it and I bet it will work after that. Don't take it back until you've formatted it, at least...

I agree with LSD, dont trash the drive. Installed it as a slave drive to another computer. Since the slave drive doesnt need boot-up OS files, you can copy your work files to a safe medium then try reformatting the drive.

Well, that sounds like a plan, we'll go with installing a new drive for the OS and other software, and use the one that's wonky for storage, never hurts to have an additional HD for storage....

that's the spirit zhann! extra storage space 4 life! :P I've got 3 hd's myself :) totalling about 320Gbytes of space :) it's a real pleasure not to have to watch out for running out of space :)

I wouldn't go so far as to say storage for life, I alteady have two 120gig drives full of models, scene files, and over 3500+ photographic textures I took but haven't done anything with yet, hmmmm, I think I need another 120 gig Seagate, and another internal drive........;]

oh, I wouldn't recommend a seagate... My dad repairs computers and servers and such he allways tells me "don't buy seagates" he says 60% of all broken disks he has to replace are seagates!

Groan! Thanks Ray! :-( I run a 160gig seagate barracuda SATA!

hey, sorry dude, I can't help it either... But hey, they don't ALL have to break ;) my sis now uses my old seagate hd from before I switched to a dual 60gbyte IBM stripe and my more recently added 200gbyte maxtor :) (I was nice and gave it to her to replace the horribly old 2gbyte thingy she was using) that one's 5 or 6 years old now and still runs perfectly fine :)

Somehow I don't feel any better..........

well.. I don't know how to make you feel better then.. at least the disk probably comes with a guarantee period of 2 or 3 years I think?

LOL Don't sweat-it, Ray! I got my c: on a 40gig Maxtor and everything's backed-up. I'll just sit back and keep my fingers crossed....;-)

oh touch lol I still have lots to back-up :P