My windows wont start up at all

[Guest]

My friend downloaded limewire onto my laptop and now when they try to turn
their computer on it goes to a blue screen and says that theres an error
because of hardware/software recently loaded onto the comp. Ive told her to
try and press F8 to check her harddrive but she says that no buttons make
anything respond. Are there anyways to fix this?

 

[Maincat]

My friend downloaded limewire onto my laptop and now when they try to turn
their computer on it goes to a blue screen and says that theres an error
because of hardware/software recently loaded onto the comp. Ive told her
to
try and press F8 to check her harddrive but she says that no buttons make
anything respond. Are there anyways to fix this?

You keep backups don't you?

 

[Guest]

I dont think my friend does no... -.- I do , she doesnt. Is there anyway to
get to her my documents despite windows not starting?

 

[db]

ok?

pressing f8 and check your drive?

the instructions seems to be lacking
something.....

here is some helpful information:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222:
To use a Safe Boot option, follow these steps:
1. Restart your computer and start pressing the F8 key on your keyboard. On a computer that is configured for booting to multiple operating systems, you can press the F8 key when the Boot Menu appears.
2. Select an option when the Windows Advanced Options menu appears, and then press ENTER.
3. When the Boot menu appears again, and the words "Safe Mode" appear in blue at the bottom, select the installation that you want to start, and then press ENTER.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------afterwards, you can try to uninstall limewireor do the steps above and try a system restore. - db
My friend downloaded limewire onto my laptop and now when they try to turn
their computer on it goes to a blue screen and says that theres an error
because of hardware/software recently loaded onto the comp. Ive told her to
try and press F8 to check her harddrive but she says that no buttons make
anything respond. Are there anyways to fix this?

 

[Guest]

pressing f8 does nothing, shes tried all of the buttons, and none do anything.

 

[db]

maybe your friend is not
pressing f8 at the right
time.

basically, the laptop needs
to be shut down. then immediately
after powering up, the f8 key
needs to be pressed down,
either pushing it repeatedly and
quickly or holding it down all together.

if it still doesn't work, then
you should boot up with
a windows cd and go into
the recovery console run
at the c prompt and run
each of the commands below:

chkdsk

&then

fixmbr

&then

fixboot

&then

exit

then try to reboot

if no windows cd is avail, then your
friend needs to go the website for
the laptop and research the
instructions/faq's on restoring
the operating system.

- db
pressing f8 does nothing, shes tried all of the buttons, and none do anything.

 

[Malke]

pressing f8 does nothing, shes tried all of the buttons, and none do anything.

Yes, the data can be retrieved without booting into Windows. I don't
mean to hurt your feelings in any way, but based on your post and your
description of your friend I rather doubt you'll be able to do this on
your own.

Should you wish to try, boot the laptop with a rescue disk such as
Knoppix or a Bart's PE and copy the data to an external hard drive. If
you take the machine to a skilled computer professional (not your local
version of BigStoreUSA), that person can also possibly use a proprietary
rescue disk to do a System Restore to before your friend did whatever
she did.

If that isn't possible, then after the data is safe your friend can do
clean-install of Windows.

Malke

 

[Rock]

My friend downloaded limewire onto my laptop and now when they try to turn
their computer on it goes to a blue screen and says that theres an error
because of hardware/software recently loaded onto the comp. Ive told her
to
try and press F8 to check her harddrive but she says that no buttons make
anything respond. Are there anyways to fix this?

Second hand posts like this are difficult. What does it mean that "she says
no buttons make anything respond". Are there error messages? Something has
to happen, a software install doesn't break hardware, so at the very least
she should be able to get into the BIOS. So if she can't do even that then
there is a serious hardware problem, but I doubt it, it's more an issue of
not giving us clear information and what the system operator is doing. If
it is the case that she can't even get into the BIOS then send the computer
in for repair, but backup the important data first. See later in this post
for info on how to do that. Otherwise here are the steps to follow to
repair this problem.

The first step would be to boot to the Advanced Options menu. Restart the
computer and repeatedly tap the F8 key as the BIOS splash screen appears,
until the Advanced Options menu shows up which has on it Safe Mode, and
Last Known Good Configuration. If Last Known Good doesn't work then boot
into safe mode. If that works try to uninstall Limewire, and if that
doesn't work do a system restore to before it was installed.

If safe mode doesn't work try safe mode with command prompt. If that lets
her in do a system restore by running this command. If it works it will
open the System Restore dialog box.
c:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

If none of the options on the Advanced Options menu work the next step is a
repair install. First though you should backup the important data on the
drive. Here are some options for that.

1. Take the drive out of the computer and install it as a slave drive in
another Windows XP or 2000 computer. It should read the drive ok, so you can
copy the data.

2. Create a bootable Bart's PE disk, boot from that, then copy the data to
external USB drive or flash drive.

3. Download a bootable Linux distro called Knoppix. Create a bootable CD
from that, boot from it, and copy the data to USB drive or flash drive, or
if the computer has two CD drives, one of which is a burner, then use the
k3b burning program on the Knoppix CD to burn the data to CD.

4. Take it to a competent computer tech to backup the data.

With the data backed up here is info on doing a repair install:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

And if all else fails a clean install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html