Was fine last night, switched on this morning (always switch off at night) and it won't boot up and shows "Error loading OS" on a blank screen.

So, until it's fixed (or if I have to buy a new one) I'm on the puny laptop :(

yikes!!!!!  =(  i feel your pain =(

Its always a pain when computers mess up :(

Could be for a number of reasons (Rutra will probaby be able to answer this best being an IT manager!)

Hard Drive issue,

Corrupt Windows Update, (im assuming you use windows :P)

Loose Cable,

Which os are you using? can you tell us if it installed any updates or anything yesterday? any funny noises when you turned it on this morning?

If you have the OS disk, you should be able to chuck it in and select repair installation - this assumes its a corrupted file, not a hardware error though.    You can run the risk with this or wiping your hard drive accidentally though if you do it wrong so beware!

Im sure other people will have better suggestions though :P

If you have two hard drives or just upgraded a hard drive, or even bought an external drive, it could be trying to boot from that, go to your bios, if any of the above apply and find boot settings, make sure it is booting from the correct drive.

Either way you need to enter the bios, which could be by pressing F1,F2 or maybe DEL, and see if you hard drive is even detected.

Jon

Thanks Rich

I don't recall it updating yesterday, was only on it a short time.

Windows Vista HP but I'm not messing with anything.  Don't do technical - I shall leave that till hubby gets home from walking Maya !!

I'm good at shopping though.....just found something that I could blow some of my savings on    Current PC is 2 core,  2gb ram and 256 NVidia graphics

Processor Type Intel. Core 2 Quad Q8200  
Processor speed 2330
RAM Memory 4096 MB  
Hard Disk Capacity 640 GB  
Drives Fitted Dual Layer DVD Rewriter  
Graphics Memory 1024 MB
Graphics Description NVIDIA. GeForce GT120  
No of USB connections 8
No. of Firewire Connections 1 High speed data transfer link for digital video and other media.
Keyboard YES  
Mouse YES  
Onboard LAN YES

Quote - If you have two hard drives or just upgraded a hard drive, or even bought an external drive, it could be trying to boot from that, go to your bios, if any of the above apply and find boot settings, make sure it is booting from the correct drive.

Either way you need to enter the bios, which could be by pressing F1,F2 or maybe DEL, and see if you hard drive is even detected.

Jon

I've been running 2 internal and several external drives since I've had it so it wouldn't suddenly want to boot from one of the others would it?

I know this very good. My  laptop started turning off itself randomly....that's why I havent posted anything in the  gallery for ages, coz it;s kinda frustrating loosing the work  every three hours or so :(

Hmm, while its not likely, but if for instance the mainboard battery has failed it could not be remember bios settings and could have reset the boot order.

Either way I would look at the bios first to A) Make sure all internal drives are seen and B) to recheck the boot order.

If you cannot see one of your drives, this could be a drive failure or something simple like a loose power cable or signal cable, If its SATA drives sometimes the power/signal attachements aren't that secure and can come off. If you can see all drives , check the boot order, if all drives are seen and the boot order is correct, you might have messed up the master boot record(MBR), if this is the case follow these instructions :-

http://www.lancelhoff.com/how-to-fix-vista-mbr-repair-broken-vista/

Jon

This may sound silly, but make sure you don't have a floppy inserted; if you have a floppy drive.

YAY! Stuart fixed it.  Seems it was trying to boot from the slave instead of the master though I hadn't changed anything.  So working now

I'm still considering getting a new tower tho - this one was ok for Vue6 but 7 struggles a bit on it.   I'm not getting much interest on my savings anyway - that's my excuse :lol:

@Jcleaver - no, don't have a floppy on this system, but thanks for mentioning it

 Happy to hear it got resolved...can he figure out why that happened? That's worth looking into as it could be a symptom of a deeper problem as yet unidentified.. ...

Well, we've run Startup Manager with no baddies showing and CC Cleaner (though only looked at the files in CC Cleaner, not deleted anything) but there is a lot of junk on here other than what I regularly clean out.  Old files and logs that Vista keeps creating for EVERYTHING!

I'm still considering getting a new pc because really, this one's getting a bit chuggish.

Ailig - re: laptops turning off suddenly after a few hours...

this sounds like a fan/overheatting issue...

AKA, your laptop is aging and this is a typical thing....

my husband's did this (frustrating, cus he loves to purchase movies and then make a backup copy for us to actually use...)... he got one of those laptop cooling bases you set the laptop on when at a table or whatever and it blows ait up inside the laptop - that helped extend the life of his laptop another year.  we then sold the laptop to someone who didnt care about the issues LOL.

Another reason it could do it is if its been a very MOBILE (not one someone uses as a desktop) laptop, there is occassionally cold solder joints that come loose inside, and all it takes is a wiggle and the connection "misses", causing the laptop to turn off.... MY laptop does this, and while my dad fixed that cold solder joint for me, its still delicate and can only be used if i set it up and leave it there - so, its still in storage LOL.  one day, it'll be a render cow.

One more thing:  Just thought of it... have you had it diagnosed?  Your power supply could be having a fit as well....

Gill - have your hubby dig inside the tower and check all cable connections - if its trying to boot from slave there's a few things there that could be at issue - loose cord, or in the two worst cases - your main HD is failing (start those backups LOL)... or worse, the motherboard is starting to have issues.  crossing fingers a cord just started working loose... and clunky or not, it can always be turned into a rendercow later ;)... could even be other things i am not aware of.

now, my disclaimer - i am NOT A TECHIE.  my brother is, my father is, my best friend is... me - nope.  I just pay attention when MY computer does strange things and try to learn so if it happens again, I can take care of it.

if you get a new pc, we wanna drool on the specs ;)

glad your computer is back up and running, though...
~meli

Hey Meli, thanks for the info - I'll let him dig around sometime during the coming week as he's not at work.  Always when he has time off I find him things to do and he works harder than when he's AT work :lol:

As for specs - well, if someone can advise me which is the better to have :

A : 8GB RAM with 512 graphics card
B: 4GB RAM with 1GB graphics card

Both cards are NVidia

I would like 8GB/1GB but ,,,,,,

It depends on what you are using it for really, Vue doesn't use the graphics card for any processing and any onboard memory is really not here or there. 

Go for 8GB/512 you'll be fine.

Jon

Melikia.....no i havent diagnosed it yet. It started like 4 months ago. First I thought it was something not important, then it happened usually  over weekend looking like my Toshiba taking days off.....My friend  said it could be some kind of virus....i cleaned everything, dig into registry and stuff, and it seemed to help, but not for long. Now I believe it's overheating issue....dont want to spend money for @repairing@ it, but at the same time quite afraid of opening it myself and clean  the fan...as they did for my  friend with another Toshi....The plan was to sell it and buy some nice quad core, now I can' do it knowing it;s not working properly....:(

Ailig:

They make ... cooling fan bases for laptops that plug into the laptop (not an outlet in the wall) and it runs an extra fan.  They run about 15-20$ at walmart up here.  Not sure where you are, or whatnot...

If its an overheatting issue, this will help for a bit of time, but it should go in and get cleaned real good & examined.  If its something else, then you know its NOT overheatting issue if you get the cooling fan base.  It looks like a little... i dunno... table or something?  and you set your laptop directly on top.

as for selling it - if you can get it to run constantly for a week, you're good to go.  when we sold hubby's, the person who bought it knew of the "issues" - we made sure of that..., and its just now started back with her (she hasnt bought her own cooling base yet LOL)

good luck there!

Gill,
assuming you want a desktop and have the cash, check my latest specs for a Vue-PC build :)
that would give you a beast ;
(from what I've seen DDR3 RAM in large sizes is easier to get hold of in the USA than here in UK, so you could have a 12 GIG ram system....!)
:)

Yea, but I'm in England - last time I looked it was part of UK  :lol:

But, I will have a peek.

I WAS thinking of getting the one with 4GB RAM + 1GB graphics card and adding the extra RAM myself (aka get hubby to do it), but I'll read through your specs - at your website?

Gill,
oops! sorry ;)
well, they seem to have DDR3 now, in triplets (with i7 Intel CPU and motherboard, you have to install in trios of RAM chips, so you can hve like 3x2 gig chips for 6 gigs, and if motherboard supports 6 RAM sticks, you could thus have 12 GIGs! Most Asus P6 boards support 6 ram chips I think?
but heck, 6 is plenty for most needs.

My suggested build
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/tutorials/htm/33.html

UK, EBuyer, page for DDR3 memory which is avaliable now (least when I wrote that while ago they didnt have any triple kits or 2GIG chips that I saw)
http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Memory---PC/subcat/DDR3-i7-Triple-Channel-Kits
:)