I recently got excellent help from Bobbye on the virus/malware forum cleaning up my current computer. The process went so well that I want to give it another go with my old computer. But before I can clean it up I’ve got to get it to open.
The problem is that when I turn on the power it no longer goes to the Windows load screen. It goes directly to a black screen with white text, displaying computer specs, in the middle of the screen it’s counting up the system ram (does so for about a minute), at the bottom of the screen it says: “Hit <F12> if you want to boot from the network, after the ram is done counting a message comes on the screen; “Keyboard error”, the screen changes and the new screen displays: “Boot Failure: System Halted.” And that’s it.
There is nothing wrong with the keyboard – it is functioning.
The only action I can get is using the:
The computer is old so don’t laugh too hard at the specs – it’s a 2002 Gateway computer; Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz; 512MB RAM; 80GB UATA100 7200RPM; Windows XP – HE.
There wasn’t an event that caused the problem - one day I went to start it up and this occurred. Since I had backed up my files two weeks earlier I only lost a few updates. Regardless, I’d like to try to get the computer operating again, get the files off the hard drive, clean up any viruses and keep it running awhile longer, if possible.
Any help would be appreciated.
The problem is that when I turn on the power it no longer goes to the Windows load screen. It goes directly to a black screen with white text, displaying computer specs, in the middle of the screen it’s counting up the system ram (does so for about a minute), at the bottom of the screen it says: “Hit <F12> if you want to boot from the network, after the ram is done counting a message comes on the screen; “Keyboard error”, the screen changes and the new screen displays: “Boot Failure: System Halted.” And that’s it.
There is nothing wrong with the keyboard – it is functioning.
The only action I can get is using the:
F1 key, which takes me to the BIOS Utility (I can navigate through this but do not know what to change, if anything).
F12, which changes the screen display to: “Network selected as first boot device for current boot at bottom of page.” There is nothing else on this page.
Alt+ctrl+del clears the screen, and when I hit Enter it goes back to the original black and white screen with the computer specs.
I cannot get into safe mode. F12, which changes the screen display to: “Network selected as first boot device for current boot at bottom of page.” There is nothing else on this page.
Alt+ctrl+del clears the screen, and when I hit Enter it goes back to the original black and white screen with the computer specs.
The computer is old so don’t laugh too hard at the specs – it’s a 2002 Gateway computer; Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz; 512MB RAM; 80GB UATA100 7200RPM; Windows XP – HE.
There wasn’t an event that caused the problem - one day I went to start it up and this occurred. Since I had backed up my files two weeks earlier I only lost a few updates. Regardless, I’d like to try to get the computer operating again, get the files off the hard drive, clean up any viruses and keep it running awhile longer, if possible.
Any help would be appreciated.
