Windows wont start up after short power outage
After a quick power outage, I cannot start windows. I get a screen that tells me Windows (XP Home edition) shut down improperly. Then it gives me 5 options for different ways to re-start. I have tried all 5 ways, and it still comes back to the same screen. Help!!1 person needs an answerI do too
March 13th, 2010 11:06pm
Apparently the power outage scrambled the XP boot files. It is also possible that the power outage damaged the hardware. There is no way for me to tell from here. If you have a desktop computer, unplug it, hold in the power button to completely discharge the motherboard, and open the case. Look carefully inside and do the Sniff Test. If you smell burnt components, then you're looking at replacing destroyed hardware. If everything looks OK, perhaps you got lucky and only Windows was corrupted (software). The first thing to do is rescue your data if you haven't previously backed it up. You can do this in a couple of ways even if you can't get into Windows (see below). Then you can try a repair install. The reason for backing up your data (if you need to) first is that even though a repair install shouldn't damage any of your data, Stuff Happens and it's best to Be Prepared. ;-) Let me know if you need more help. In the meantime, purchase an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS - battery backup). They cost around $60. Data retrieval: 1. Pull the drive and put it in a USB drive enclosure or use a USB drive adapter. Attach this to a computer running a working install of XP/Vista/Windows7. Use the working Windows Explorer to copy the data to the rescue system's hard drive and then burn the data to cd or dvd. I prefer not to do this if I know the drive is infected because there is a chance of infecting the host system. In these cases, I use #2 below. 2. You can boot the target computer with a Bart's PE (if you are using XP) or a Linux live CD such as Knoppix and retrieve the data that way. Here is general information on using Knoppix for this: You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a CD/DVD burner OR a USB thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data OR an external USB hard drive formatted FAT32 (not NTFS)*. Download the Knoppix .iso and create your bootable CD. If you are doing this in an older operating system (XP or Vista), you'll need third-party burning software like Nero, Roxio, or the free ImgBurn (Windows 7 can burn .isos natively). Burn as an image, not as data. Then boot with the CD you created and Knoppix will be able to see the Windows files. If you are using the USB thumb drive or the external hard drive, right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to get its properties and uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then click on it to open it. Note that the default mouse action in the window manager used by Knoppix (KDE) is a single click to open instead of the traditional MS Windows' double-click. If you want to burn CD/DVDs, use the K3b program. *My understanding is that you can now write to an NTFS partition from Linux. If you wish to do this, Google for instructions about using the NTFS driver. http://www.knoppix.net http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - Bart's PE Builder http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm - Repair Install How-To
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March 14th, 2010 6:36pm