HELP! My computer has power but will not boot up!

[MRVIG36]

Hello to anyone who may have some helpful information! I posess very
little knowledge of the inner workings of a computer so please bare
with me. The computer was a custom built job from one of these pc barn,
etc, type stores. It was originally built for my mother in law a few
years back. I believe that is was done well according to some opinions
of freinds who are in the know. She recently handed it over to me (too
much computer for what she needed). The one problem she was having was
that the boot up time was taking way too long. I determined that the
only thing wrong with the pc was that the windows firewall was running
and dragging the boot up process along. With one click of the mouse,
that problem was rectified (yeah for me!) While i was at it, I added
some additional memory and I was off to the races. The pc worked well
up untill the last week or so. I did notice that every now and again
upon boot up, I could here varying levels of a "whirring, humming
sound" that would eventually go away. I assumed it to be a fan that was
just cold (I live in the northeast and my computer is in an area that
presently does not have heat, I would guess it's sometimes in the upper
50's in that area of the house right now). To make a long story short,
in the last week, my pc turns on and still makes that noise, but more
importantly does not boot up at all. The pc attempts to boot up but
instead brings me to a black and white screen that provides options for
booting up in safe mode, last working settings, etc, none of which do
anything when tried other than just automatically trying to reboot
again and again. I will be checking the fan and hard drive tonight to
see about the sound but I am looking for other options as well. H-E-L-P!

 

[Rock]

Hello to anyone who may have some helpful information! I posess very
little knowledge of the inner workings of a computer so please bare
with me. The computer was a custom built job from one of these pc barn,
etc, type stores. It was originally built for my mother in law a few
years back. I believe that is was done well according to some opinions
of freinds who are in the know. She recently handed it over to me (too
much computer for what she needed). The one problem she was having was
that the boot up time was taking way too long. I determined that the
only thing wrong with the pc was that the windows firewall was running
and dragging the boot up process along. With one click of the mouse,
that problem was rectified (yeah for me!) While i was at it, I added
some additional memory and I was off to the races. The pc worked well
up untill the last week or so. I did notice that every now and again
upon boot up, I could here varying levels of a "whirring, humming
sound" that would eventually go away. I assumed it to be a fan that was
just cold (I live in the northeast and my computer is in an area that
presently does not have heat, I would guess it's sometimes in the upper
50's in that area of the house right now). To make a long story short,
in the last week, my pc turns on and still makes that noise, but more
importantly does not boot up at all. The pc attempts to boot up but
instead brings me to a black and white screen that provides options for
booting up in safe mode, last working settings, etc, none of which do
anything when tried other than just automatically trying to reboot
again and again. I will be checking the fan and hard drive tonight to
see about the sound but I am looking for other options as well. H-E-L-P!

Firstly is there a backup of important data? If not retrieve the data
first. If you need help on how to do this let us know.

After the data is backed up up download a drive diagnostic utility from the
hard drive manufacturer's web site. That will create a bootable floppy or
CD. Boot from that and run it.

As a side question, you haven't been operating online without a firewall
have you?

 

[MRVIG36]

As far as a back-up, I have never done that before. To be honest, I use
my pc for basic things. Uploading pictures, MS Office, Email, and so
on. Although there are some important items saved on the hard drive, I
never really thought of backing anything up. I AM NOW OF COURSE! Can
this even be done in my pc's present state? I can't seem to get
anywhere thus far. Thanks for the response. I look forward to hearing
from you again soon.

As far as the side question, I have protection from behind my proxy
server as well as my router.

 

[Rock]

As far as a back-up, I have never done that before. To be honest, I use
my pc for basic things. Uploading pictures, MS Office, Email, and so
on. Although there are some important items saved on the hard drive, I
never really thought of backing anything up. I AM NOW OF COURSE! Can
this even be done in my pc's present state? I can't seem to get
anywhere thus far. Thanks for the response. I look forward to hearing
from you again soon.

As far as the side question, I have protection from behind my proxy
server as well as my router.

"Rock" wrote:

There are several ways to retrieve the important data that's on the drive.
Do this first before doing any repairs.
1. Install the drive as a slave drive in another XP or Windows 2000
computer and copy the data to another hard drive or flash drive or burn to
CD.
2. Install the drive in an external hard drive enclosure and connect that
through USB to another computer and copy the data.
3. Create a bootable Bart's PE disk, boot from that and save the data to
flash drive.
4. Create a bootable Linux CD from a distro like Knoppix, boot from that
and copy the data to flash drive or if there is more than one CD drive and
one is a burner, use the k3b program on the Knoppix distro to burn the data
to CD
5. Take the drive to a competent computer repair tech, not the Geek squad,
and have them backup the data.

Always, always have a full and complete backup. This can be as simple as
burning important data to CD, or using a drive imaging program such as
Acronis True Image to save a compressed image of the drive to external media
such as an external USB hard drive and for redundancy burn a copy of the
image to DVD.

 

[- Bobb -]

Hello to anyone who may have some helpful information!

To make a long story short,
in the last week, my pc attempts to boot up but
instead brings me to a black and white screen that provides options
for
booting up in safe mode, last working settings, etc, none of which do
anything when tried other than just automatically trying to reboot
again and again. I will be checking the fan and hard drive tonight to
see about the sound but I am looking for other options as well.
H-E-L-P!

So you tried " safe mode "and "Last known good" mode ? If you select
SAFE MODE from that menu , what happens exactly ( and give time frames,
like "after 2 minutes I see the Windows logo, then ...")
and does it HANG forever , or does it reboot on it's own ?

When it first powers up , it reports a message like
Press F10 for setup ( or DEL etc) , have you checked those settings
(BIOS) ?
Have you ever looked at them before to know "what's good" vs "what's not
good "
Reply here.

 

[MRVIG36]

THANKS FOR THE HELP ROCK THUS FAR. Here is what I find out last night
as far as my problem goes. The power supply fan is where the noise is
coming from...phew! I also found out by pressing and holding F8 during
the attempted boot up process, I was able to turn off the BSOD
automatic reboopt feature which enabled me to actually see the error.
The error that comes up is a STOP error, 0x00000024 (0x00190203,
0x85F389B8, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000). It's a long shot but does this
help at all. I plan on googling this stop error for more info but maybe
you are familiar?

Thanks!

PS- do you know if there is a way to find my submitted topic without
having to search through everyone else's topics? Sorry, I'm new to
this!

 

[MRVIG36]

Safe mode, last working settings, etc all attempt to boot up and then
my pc simply shuts down and attempts to restart. From the point where I
press a button for one of the above options, to the time of restart
probaly takes only 10 seconds or so.

Here is what I find out last night as far as my problem goes. The power
supply fan is where the noise is
coming from...phew! I also found out by pressing and holding F8 during
the attempted boot up process, I was able to turn off the BSOD
automatic reboot feature which enabled me to actually see the error.
The error that comes up is a STOP error, 0x00000024 (0x00190203,
0x85F389B8, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000). It's a long shot but does this
help at all. I plan on googling this stop error for more info but maybe

you are familiar?

Thanks!


PS- do you know if there is a way to find my submitted topic without
having to search through everyone else's topics? Sorry, I'm new to
this!

 

[- Bobb -]

again:

When it first powers up , it reports a message like
Press F10 for setup ( or DEL etc) , have you done that
to check your settings (BIOS) ?

It might be that your Pc is monitoring the speed of the fan.
Now that it's too low it STOPS the cpu.
go into BIOS - there should be an
Advanced tab - then POWER tab
DISABLE monitoring

For instance on mine ( Asus motherboard) I select advanced - power -
then there is a choice to disable ALL power functions , or each fan
individually. So,

DISABLED monitoring . If fans still show selected - disable each.
Power off.
power on - reboot to windows ?
If so, THAT was it.
If not, you'll need to open the box.
The EASY way is to remove all unneeded cards, but first let's see if
disabling monitoring fixes it.


Bobb


If not,

 

[Rock]

THANKS FOR THE HELP ROCK THUS FAR. Here is what I find out last night
as far as my problem goes. The power supply fan is where the noise is
coming from...phew! I also found out by pressing and holding F8 during
the attempted boot up process, I was able to turn off the BSOD
automatic reboopt feature which enabled me to actually see the error.
The error that comes up is a STOP error, 0x00000024 (0x00190203,
0x85F389B8, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000). It's a long shot but does this
help at all. I plan on googling this stop error for more info but maybe
you are familiar?

Thanks!

PS- do you know if there is a way to find my submitted topic without
having to search through everyone else's topics? Sorry, I'm new to
this!

http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.htm
0x00000024: NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM

I would start with running the drive diagnostics downloaded from the drive
manufacturer's web site.

 

[phisher]

I would consider changing your ram. Had a similar issue to yours some
time back and it turned out to be a corrupt stick of ram. see if you can
borrow some (of the same type) from a friends pc. If you have more than
1 stick, remove each stick in turn and reboot

MRVIG36:

As far as a back-up, I have never done that before. To be honest, I use
my pc for basic things. Uploading pictures, MS Office, Email, and so
on. Although there are some important items saved on the hard drive, I
never really thought of backing anything up. I AM NOW OF COURSE! Can
this even be done in my pc's present state? I can't seem to get
anywhere thus far. Thanks for the response. I look forward to hearing
from you again soon.

As far as the side question, I have protection from behind my proxy
server as well as my router.

H-E-L-P!Firstly is there a backup of important data? If not retrieve
the data