alright, i already tried to contact microsoft about my problem via email/their website, and they told me (with an automated response) to contact the computer manufacturer and ask them for help...or if i really want the big m to help me, i can pay them assloads of money.

well, since i'm broke, i figured i'd give you guys a shot

i'm running windows xp sp2.

anyway, yesterday morning i downloaded and installed the latest updates via the microsoft updates website. as usually happens, i decided to wait to restart my computer because i was busy working on a couple of different things. but of course, down the street from me the electric company was working on the power lines and ended up cutting the power for like a half hour or so.

the power comes back on, and since i had to go to work i didnt mess with my computer until i came home last night. so i get home and i get the standard "windows did not shut down properly, select an option to continue" screen, which consists of start windows normally, three different "start in safe mode"'s and start with last known good settings.
...none of these five options will allow me to start my comptuer up. each one is virtually the same, i select it, you can hear the computer "talking" as it begins to load, the windows screen comes up for a second or two and the computer restarts itself. for you programmers out there, it's basically an endless loop. it starts up, gets to a certain point, restarts, and it never ends.

at least if i could start up in safe mode i could use my flash drive to get the shit that i want off of the computer and i'd just restore it to the factory settings, but i can't even do that.

i'm on my dad's computer right now, and neither his nor my step mother's computers(both of which were up and running) have been affected, which is why i think it's because the updates did not install properly that i'm having problems.

for you linux people out there, is it possible to install linux without starting the computer up? (also, i've never used linux so i'd need some tips on how the os works)

do you have a windows xp disc (either yours or your parents)? just use that to do a reinstall/repair and you shouldn't lose your data.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

i honestly don't think so...we all have hewlett-packards and the c drive is partitioned so that the files neccesary for a full recovery are already on the computer...however i'll still search around here.

thanks for your help

okay, i've been unable to find a disc for xp.

however when the computer boots up, before it gets to windows it says to select whichever to proceed with. either xp or windows home recovery console. so i selected the recovery console, and it won't even load up. i get a blue screen error (although not exactly in the same format, something i havent seen since the days of windows 98) saying that there is "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" and it gives whatever specific error/location


(whatever the hell that means.)

i found a website that has an iso file that you can burn to disc so that you can run linux from it. i think i'm gonna go try that...

if that doesn't work for you, my next suggestion would be to "borrow" a friends XP disc

there are basically two possibilities:

your PC has a UDMA-Controller which is connected with a 40-line connection cable

what you have to do: exchange your 40 with a 80-line connection cable

possibility two (much more likely from what you've described, so forget the 1st possibility)

your computer is pretty fucked, an error has been written onto your drive, bla. what you have to do is to use the repair function of your xp-cd (get one, I assume you're not the only person in the world who has xp) chkdsk /p to repair the problem, fixboot to rewrite the bootsector

the end

haha, i dont even know what a udma controller is

but thank you...

yeah it doesn't matter really, just get your hands of a copy of the xp install cd and almost everything will work out fine. you'll still be stuck with windows xp, but at least that'll be working again.

I'll take this one.

You can download and burn a LiveCD that you can boot from. Then you'll have a basic linux environment with a command prompt, some text-based apps, and usually network functionality. It wouldn't help your windows situation, though. Basically all you'd be able to do is either use text-based linux programs or install linux.

so i couldn't pull off old files off of my hard drive then? (before i would reformat the whole thing...if it comes to that)

i'm still working on getting an xp cd, lol...most everyone is at work this time of day though.

Can you pull out your HD and dump all the files onto another computer? Then you could install linux on your exisitng drive. Just becaus ethe boot sector is totalled, you should still be able to hook the old drive up to another machine as a secondary drive and dump your files (if the other computer has adequate room.

i've installed my own cd burner awhile back and had taken an old modem out of a computer and installed a new one, but i've never messsed around with the hard drive before. is there anything i need to tinker with externally? (as in when i installed my cd burner it was set as the master at the factory and i had to physically make it the slave) or will it just recognize it as a seperate HD?

hmm...i hope i have a slot for another HD in my old comp too...it is a shitty, shitty emachines from '02 i think.

again, thank you everyone for your help

*edit*, nevermind...when i opened my old comp i see that there's a "slot" for master and one for slave.

The wires for a HD are the same as on a CD drive. If you understand setting the jumper to master/slave/cable select, then you are all set.

okay, so i booted up my old comp with my newer HD as the slave...

i tried getting into the old drive and it's saying it needs to be formatted.........

so i thought "hmm, well my old comp is the old, old windows xp home edition, so maybe it needs to be upgraded to sp2"(which i would've done eventually anyway) but it still doesn't see it as the same format.

like i said before, hewlett packard (which is my newer computer) automatically partitions their hard drives so that they don't have to send out a recovery disc with their pcs, and the emachines(my old computer) is not partitioned...so would that be enough for a compatibility issue??? i hope to hell not. lol

i guess in the end i might just have to track down an xp recovery disc...

*edit* the other half of the partition, used for recovery, opens up just fine (although they don't allow you to see the contents), but i don't get the "this drive needs to be formatted" prompt...

You could do something to try and recover the files. Like R-Studio:

http://www.r-studio.com

If you're only interested in saving the files, you could, provided the livecd comes with the NTFS module. I'm not sure which distros come built-in with it, but if there aren't any, you'd have to do a full installation. And if you installed a distro that doesn't come with it, you'd have to install the module, which can be complicated if you've never used linux before.

care to elaborate on this? i don't have an "XP" disc per se...it's called "the ultimate boot disc" and through it i can get into dos...but htat's about it.

on the following site (http://webcast.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8658-1) there is the following code:



it just goes to the next line when i try to create "tmp" and then when i type in the first real line of code it states "UNABLE TO OPEN FILE C:\windows\tmp\system.bak" or something like that...(which yes, i typed in the whole line from copy to .bak just as it says on the site.

which, if i can't get onto the hard drive even when it's used as a slave i guess it would make sense that i can't access files on it period, but is there any hope now? again, hopefully i can do something through dos....

*edit* ooh, and while i'm at it...how do i do some simple dos commands such as like...if i type in "C:/" how do i view all folders and files that are on C:? (i remembered doing it before but i was just dicking around at the time so didnt really need to remember it)

nevermind. just fuck it.



fuck it in the brain.

You should take out your hard drive and take it to a friend's house with a computer running XP. Set it as slave, and install it on your friend's computer. Then run chkdsk on it. Also you can go to the Hard Drive manufacturer's website, and download a program that you can run that will check the integrity of the drive. It's normally used for warranty issues, but you can still use it to see if the drive is fried. Power outages definitely fuck with computers

okay, like i said before, when i hooked up the HD to my old pc, it said it needed to be reformatted because of corrupt data. so i'm doing that right now.

will it automatically be formatted into windows? if i still have to get a windows disc i'm gonna shoot myself, haha.

btw, it's taking FOREVER to reformat it...c'mon, it's only 147 GB...lol