Argghh,
Had a power cut yesterday while my PC was switched on, and now it won't boot. It gets to the point where the XP (Pro) logo appears (on black background with green progress bar below), then suddenly the screen flashes blue, and it reboots again.
The blue screen is up for only a spilt second, so I couldn't read what was on it, so I cleverly filmed it with a camcorder, and playing it back on the tv and freezing the frame I can see that it says:
"A problem has been detected and windows...." It ends by suggesting I run CHKDSK /F. There is no hex error code that it gives me on on this screen.
Now, before I get the the XP logo screen I do get a screen saying that a problem had occured previously, and offering me to start windows in various different modes (including safe mode). I've tried all these modes and get the same problem on each of them.
I've also tried doing F8, but can't see anything in these config screens that could help me. The problem is that I can't run CHKDSK if I can't boot it up in Safe mode, I can't even get a dos prompt.
Annoyingly this is a PC I purchased on ebay, and big surprise it didn't come with the XP install CD (so I can't do a repair this way).
Is there anyway to recover from this? Are there any utilities available that I could burn to a CD, and boot my computer from, that would allow me to at least salvage my important files from the disk?
Many thanks,
Iain
Had a power cut yesterday while my PC was switched on, and now it won't boot. It gets to the point where the XP (Pro) logo appears (on black background with green progress bar below), then suddenly the screen flashes blue, and it reboots again.
The blue screen is up for only a spilt second, so I couldn't read what was on it, so I cleverly filmed it with a camcorder, and playing it back on the tv and freezing the frame I can see that it says:
"A problem has been detected and windows...." It ends by suggesting I run CHKDSK /F. There is no hex error code that it gives me on on this screen.
Now, before I get the the XP logo screen I do get a screen saying that a problem had occured previously, and offering me to start windows in various different modes (including safe mode). I've tried all these modes and get the same problem on each of them.
I've also tried doing F8, but can't see anything in these config screens that could help me. The problem is that I can't run CHKDSK if I can't boot it up in Safe mode, I can't even get a dos prompt.
Annoyingly this is a PC I purchased on ebay, and big surprise it didn't come with the XP install CD (so I can't do a repair this way).
Is there anyway to recover from this? Are there any utilities available that I could burn to a CD, and boot my computer from, that would allow me to at least salvage my important files from the disk?
Many thanks,
Iain