Dell with XP home will not start

[Bob]

My computer (A Dell with XP home) will not start. It boots to the
windows start up screen then goes to a blue screen that says Registry_
Error and says that Windows was shut down to protect itself.
I tried to start it in safe mode and it ends up at the same screen.
It gives options to start in safe mode, debug mode, etc but, none of
them do anything. Can't even get a prompt I can't get to system restore
at all. And,
I don't have an XP disk to use. The computer has an
i386 directory but I can't get to it.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

My computer (A Dell with XP home) will not start. It boots to the
windows start up screen then goes to a blue screen that says Registry_
Error and says that Windows was shut down to protect itself.
I tried to start it in safe mode and it ends up at the same screen.
It gives options to start in safe mode, debug mode, etc but, none of
them do anything. Can't even get a prompt I can't get to system
restore at all. And,
I don't have an XP disk to use. The computer has an
i386 directory but I can't get to it.

Call Dell. At least every Dell I have gotten (we're in the hundreds at
least) came with an actual Installation CD. If yours did not, then they
likely had a way to restore it in case of a problem such as this - and they
can tell you.

 

[Ron Martell]

Call Dell. At least every Dell I have gotten (we're in the hundreds at
least) came with an actual Installation CD. If yours did not, then they
likely had a way to restore it in case of a problem such as this - and they
can tell you.

Recent Dell systems come with a hidden "System Recovery" partition on
the hard drive.

A client of mine purchased a new Dell system last month and it arrived
with the hard drive DOA. Dell shipped him a new hard drive, but did
not image it before shipping so we had to go back to Dell tech support
and then wait another 3 days for the CDs to arrive. Then it took
about 3 hours to format the new hard drive and install the CDs


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm