computer booting problem

[Possibility]

Recently, and seemingly out of the blue (as I cannot recall downloading anything or changing anything), my laptop has started having problems booting up. It will go to the windows load screen (xp pro) then flash the blue screen of death and go to a standard DOS screen that says "Windows did not start successfully [blah blah blah]" and gives a couple options: start windows in safe mode, start windows with the last known working configuration, start windows normally. At first, it would do this once or twice than start fine, then it started taking 20 restarts to load properly, and now I have to leave my laptop on for hours before it finally loads (automatically tries again every 30 seconds.) I updated windows and it's still not working. Any ideas on what could be causing this before I go through the trouble of trying to get tech support to understand?

 

[surly]

Recently, and seemingly out of the blue (as I cannot recall downloading anything or changing anything), my laptop has started having problems booting up. It will go to the windows load screen (xp pro) then flash the blue screen of death and go to a standard DOS screen that says "Windows did not start successfully [blah blah blah]" and gives a couple options: start windows in safe mode, start windows with the last known working configuration, start windows normally. At first, it would do this once or twice than start fine, then it started taking 20 restarts to load properly, and now I have to leave my laptop on for hours before it finally loads (automatically tries again every 30 seconds.) I updated windows and it's still not working. Any ideas on what could be causing this before I go through the trouble of trying to get tech support to understand?

Could be a hardware problem.

If you have System Restore turned on why not trying to restore from awhile back when it worked normally. It's in the system tools menu.

 

[Moon54]

Could be a corrupt sector on your hard drive.
Try doing a full scandisk on the drive. Also, running a defrag on your hard drive can help.

 

[photoads]

If you have set restore points you could load one of them and go back a while. Do you have spyware doctor or the like, try running hijackthis from http://download.hijackthis.eu/hijackthis_199.zip then post the log results to HijackThis Log file this will tell you of any strange reg entries etc?

 

[Deliguy]

if you get it to startup click Start >> Run
Type: chkdsk /r
it'll ask you if you want to run it next time you reboot.
Y
Enter
Restart
You can also do this from the windows cd or recovery console.

 

[rgchris]

My first instinct is that there's something wrong with the power supply. I've seen the same thing happen to my computers far too often.

 

[Deliguy]

My first instinct is that there's something wrong with the power supply. I've seen the same thing happen to my computers far too often.

on a laptop thats quite rare since the power is regulated first through the adapter and then through the battery and then through the power supply. Typically it'll fail completely if it does.

 

[rgchris]

Battery issues come up all the time on laptops...

And I'd say not being able to boot up properly is pretty close to 'failing completely'.

 

[Stanley]

run a DFT (drive fitness test)

Support | Downloads

burn the CD image, boot from it, it will tell you if you're hard drive is dying or not

 

[pjleonhardt]

This just happened to my friends hp laptop a few weeks ago. I think it was a corrupt driver issue, a fresh install of Windows fixed it.

 

[Deliguy]

if the battery dies on a laptop the laptop will still work. If your wondering, you could always plug the adapter in and disconnect hte battery and connect a multimeter to the pins.

if you have a corrupt driver(if you can boot into safemode everytime but not regular windows than that is a possibility) than click start >> Run >> verifier >> OK
that'll run the driver verifier utility. This is all assuming you have either winxp or 2000 of course.
but seriously do the chkdsk /r first

ppl always jump to reinstalling windows. my office repairs about 30 computers a day with just about every imaginable problem and we RARELY ever have to reinstall windows. We run into a situation where its required maybe once a month and thats typically only AFTER the user has tried to fix the problem themselves by running restore crap or reinstalling themselves. In all reality the only acceptable time to require a reinstall of windows is a critical freeze on memory addresses 0x00000007 - 0x0000020F during a service pack update. Everythign else is easily fixed.