Somehow my husband has managed to screw up my computer again although I have taken extreme cautioun in protecting it. I have anti-virus, spy-watcher and remover, pop-up and ad-ware watcher as well as remover, and a firewall. Now my problem sounds simple enough and i have tried everything i could think of to fix it with no luck. you kind people are my last hope before i have to format and lose everything. I can not open any files except internet explorer. None of my programs are running at startup. Quick launch icons now look like the icon used for windows when it can not open a file because it can not find the proper extension to run. I tried running regedit and msconfig and i get the window look for the appropriate program on the web. i tried "command.com" in run window it also does not work. i tried reinstalling windows and it won't go to the next window and then cd rom becomes undetectable til reboot again and again. If anyone has a clue on how to fix this please tell me im desperate. Thank you
Hi My name is Gigi and I need some serious help PLEASE!!!
- Thread starter gigiluv4u2nv
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vnf4ultra
Posts: 1,360 +2
Welcome to Techspot.
Have you tried using "system restore" in programs/accessories/system tools. It lets you restore your computer to a previous time when it worked properly. It has saved me some time when I have problems. Just find a date that you know the computer was working on that has a restore point and restore it to that point, it takes a while, so be patient.
Have you tried using "system restore" in programs/accessories/system tools. It lets you restore your computer to a previous time when it worked properly. It has saved me some time when I have problems. Just find a date that you know the computer was working on that has a restore point and restore it to that point, it takes a while, so be patient.
System Restore
I would never ever ever use system restore again in my life. It has never failed to crash my computer causing me to have to format before getting a chance to save anything. thank you anyway for replying.
I would never ever ever use system restore again in my life. It has never failed to crash my computer causing me to have to format before getting a chance to save anything. thank you anyway for replying.
im using windows xp and i know its odd but thats just how it is not sure why but its always been like that
howard_hopkinso
Posts: 21,238 +17
tried reinstalling and repairing ;o(
neither worked. Upon trying to reinstall it simply would not go to the next screen after clicking install windows. As for repairing, well i received about 6 messages, all containing the extensions dll or exe not abled to be opened by windows please search the web for the appropriate program, which i had no luck with either. Any other ideas. I am open to any and all suggesstions except system restore and formatting. that is not an option til absolutely necessary.
neither worked. Upon trying to reinstall it simply would not go to the next screen after clicking install windows. As for repairing, well i received about 6 messages, all containing the extensions dll or exe not abled to be opened by windows please search the web for the appropriate program, which i had no luck with either. Any other ideas. I am open to any and all suggesstions except system restore and formatting. that is not an option til absolutely necessary.
luvhuffer
Posts: 431 +2
Run the "system file checker". It wil check your system files and repair any damaged or corrupted system files. If it works, you will need to reinstall all your updates. It may require you to put your XP CD in. Go to Start/Run. Type in
sfc /scannow
and hit OK Make sure you have a space between c and /. That's all you need to do. Just let it run by itself. There is no prompting.
sfc /scannow
and hit OK Make sure you have a space between c and /. That's all you need to do. Just let it run by itself. There is no prompting.
hi,is this a notebook or a desktop?the reason i ask is because if its a desktop you still have a few things you could try,you should have a floppy drive,do you?if yes than get an win98 boot disk,boot in dos and you'll have some dos utilities,namely you can move any important files on your c: to another drive and use scanreg,scandisk to try and find the problem after exhausting which you can finally format the entire partition if it doesnt yield any result.from there on you could do a clean install of winxp.now i know this might not be the best solution to your problem(fellow techspot memmbers could probably come up with much better alternatives given the time)but keep it as a last resort.
if this is a notebook than it must have came with a restore cd/dvd,try that.
if this is a notebook than it must have came with a restore cd/dvd,try that.
RealBlackStuff
Posts: 6,450 +3
Have you tried booting in Safe Mode?
Press the F8 key repeatedly upon starting your PC.
If you are handy with PCs and have another computer, perhaps you could take the harddisk out, put it in the other PC, jumpered as slave, and get your personal files off it.
Then put it back in (as master) and format/reinstall.
BTW, click Start/Run and use cmd rather than command.com
Press the F8 key repeatedly upon starting your PC.
If you are handy with PCs and have another computer, perhaps you could take the harddisk out, put it in the other PC, jumpered as slave, and get your personal files off it.
Then put it back in (as master) and format/reinstall.
BTW, click Start/Run and use cmd rather than command.com
Phantasm66
Posts: 4,909 +8
gigiluv4u2nv said:
That sounds to me like you have bad RAM.
If you have more than one DIMM module inside your machine, take one of them out. Try again. You might well find that the machine will boot up normally again if there is still an OS on it. Try replacing that module if not and trying without the other, etc.
If you have bad memory, you will pretty much experience everything crashing like that. This happened to me several years ago, with exactly the same experience. Basically, nothing will work and nothing will reinstall. It says that message about the CD rom because data getting read from it is getting corrupted in RAM and when it gets to the OS, all it know what to say is that the CD is bad. It does not realise that the system RAM is bad.
I don't think your hubby did anything, I think this just happened naturally by itself. You may even be able to return the RAM under warranty.
This is my best guess. Sorry if it turns out to be wrong. If its not that, then maybe you have a bad CPU, but I think if this was the case you would not even make it to a semi-useable desktop at all. In anycase, I am sure you have some kind of hardware fault now, and all the repairing windows in the world won't help that.
One thing you can try, if it is not the ram and I bet it is, to recover your files is to download and create a live linux boot disk. Basically that is an entire operating system that boots from your cd player. IF the problem is a programming issue and not a hardware issue, you should be able to get into your system and recover files--save them to a cd, flash drive, or whatever.
You computer will run smooth off of the live boot disk. When you recover all of your important files, then you can reformat your hardrive without loosing anything.
I have never made a live boot disk, but a coworker made me one from Ubuntu. http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/
If you look halfway down, you can see the live disk. I think you need to download it and save it as an ifo file. Smarter people then me here would no how to do that.
I used my disk to recover important documents from a coworkers computer after it crashed and couldn't start windows.
You computer will run smooth off of the live boot disk. When you recover all of your important files, then you can reformat your hardrive without loosing anything.
I have never made a live boot disk, but a coworker made me one from Ubuntu. http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/5.04/
If you look halfway down, you can see the live disk. I think you need to download it and save it as an ifo file. Smarter people then me here would no how to do that.
I used my disk to recover important documents from a coworkers computer after it crashed and couldn't start windows.
I think this fixes the problem
I know this thread was started a long time ago, but I just ran into the same problem today (it happened after I downloaded some WinXP updates). Hopefully this will help out other folks who are experiencing this. Anyway, please read this thread http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/132017.html and it will explain how to fix the problem--at least this worked for me!
I know this thread was started a long time ago, but I just ran into the same problem today (it happened after I downloaded some WinXP updates). Hopefully this will help out other folks who are experiencing this. Anyway, please read this thread http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/132017.html and it will explain how to fix the problem--at least this worked for me!
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