XP hangs/freezes before my accounts and the MS sound "appear"

[Guest]

Last night I shut down my Presario 2550 (Windows XP Pro SP1) normally, with no problems, and today, when I turned it on, everything froze up at the blue screen where the accounts and MS sound usually appear. I have tried starting it up in safe mode, using the "last known good configuration", and pretty much everything else that's available on the screen you get when you hit F8 but startup freezes in the same place very time.
I don't think I can do an In Place Upgrade b/c when I sent the laptop to HP a few months ago (for a hard drive problem - they replaced it) they installed XP Pro but I bought the machine with XP Home. They didn't send me CDs for XP Pro so I only have the one that came with the laptop and hence, XP Home.
I also tried booting from Norton Ghost CD and the original XP Home CD but it seems as though using those options I'll lose all of my data.
Is there any way to save my data? I really don't want to lose my photos.....
Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

[TJ]

Last night I shut down my Presario 2550 (Windows XP Pro SP1) normally,

with no problems, and today, when I turned it on, everything froze up at the
blue screen where the accounts and MS sound usually appear. I have tried
starting it up in safe mode, using the "last known good configuration", and
pretty much everything else that's available on the screen you get when you
hit F8 but startup freezes in the same place very time.

I don't think I can do an In Place Upgrade b/c when I sent the laptop to

HP a few months ago (for a hard drive problem - they replaced it) they
installed XP Pro but I bought the machine with XP Home. They didn't send me
CDs for XP Pro so I only have the one that came with the laptop and hence,
XP Home.

I also tried booting from Norton Ghost CD and the original XP Home CD but

it seems as though using those options I'll lose all of my data.

Is there any way to save my data? I really don't want to lose my photos.....
Thanks to anyone who can help.

You could try this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];316941

and follow the instructions to "Install Windows XP in a new folder". This
is called a parallel installation. Basically you would have two Windows
folders (call the new one WinXP or something). The hope is that you could
then boot into the new parallel WinXP and save your data. I don't know for
a fact that you could have different Pro and Home installs in parallel but I
don't see why not either.

However, before I were to do the above, I would get something like Spinrite
(www.grc.com), run it at Level 2, 3, or 4, and see if it can find and repair
any problems with the drive. I wouldn't be surprised if the goons at HP
didn't actually replace your old drive, they probably just ran some disk
software to mark the bad sectors then reformatted and installed XP Pro and
shipped it back to you. The problem is that once there's bad sectors, the
drive is already on it's way down hill and if they left the same drive in,
it could be screwed up again. Spinrite may help with this.

A third option, go out and buy a new hard drive, and connect it as the
primary drive in your machine. Move the old drive to secondary. Do a clean
XP Home install on the new drive. Boot into the new Windows, and recover
your data off the old drive.

Finally, if you have a floppy drive, you could use another computer to
create a Bootable DOS floppy and boot into DOS on your machine, then recover
your data that way. This won't work if your Hard Drive is formatted as NTFS
because I don't think DOS can read NTFS.

Please proceed at your own risk, but I just wanted to throw some options
your way. Maybe discuss these with someone you trust who knows a lot about
computers. I know how frustrating these types of problems are!!

Good luck

 

[TJ]

I should have told you also, first thing to do before anything else, boot to
the Windows XP Cd-Rom, choose R for Recovery Console, it should list one
windows installation, select it and login with the administrator password
that was created at install (may be just blank). Type:

chkdsk c: /r

This may do the trick, it's at least worth a try. It takes a while to run
but let it finish and see what happens.

Last night I shut down my Presario 2550 (Windows XP Pro SP1) normally,

with no problems, and today, when I turned it on, everything froze up at the
blue screen where the accounts and MS sound usually appear. I have tried
starting it up in safe mode, using the "last known good configuration", and
pretty much everything else that's available on the screen you get when you
hit F8 but startup freezes in the same place very time.

I don't think I can do an In Place Upgrade b/c when I sent the laptop to

HP a few months ago (for a hard drive problem - they replaced it) they
installed XP Pro but I bought the machine with XP Home. They didn't send me
CDs for XP Pro so I only have the one that came with the laptop and hence,
XP Home.

I also tried booting from Norton Ghost CD and the original XP Home CD

but
it seems as though using those options I'll lose all of my data.

Is there any way to save my data? I really don't want to lose my photos.....
Thanks to anyone who can help.

You could try this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];316941

and follow the instructions to "Install Windows XP in a new folder". This
is called a parallel installation. Basically you would have two Windows
folders (call the new one WinXP or something). The hope is that you could
then boot into the new parallel WinXP and save your data. I don't know for
a fact that you could have different Pro and Home installs in parallel but I
don't see why not either.

However, before I were to do the above, I would get something like Spinrite
(www.grc.com), run it at Level 2, 3, or 4, and see if it can find and repair
any problems with the drive. I wouldn't be surprised if the goons at HP
didn't actually replace your old drive, they probably just ran some disk
software to mark the bad sectors then reformatted and installed XP Pro and
shipped it back to you. The problem is that once there's bad sectors, the
drive is already on it's way down hill and if they left the same drive in,
it could be screwed up again. Spinrite may help with this.

A third option, go out and buy a new hard drive, and connect it as the
primary drive in your machine. Move the old drive to secondary. Do a clean
XP Home install on the new drive. Boot into the new Windows, and recover
your data off the old drive.

Finally, if you have a floppy drive, you could use another computer to
create a Bootable DOS floppy and boot into DOS on your machine, then recover
your data that way. This won't work if your Hard Drive is formatted as NTFS
because I don't think DOS can read NTFS.

Please proceed at your own risk, but I just wanted to throw some options
your way. Maybe discuss these with someone you trust who knows a lot about
computers. I know how frustrating these types of problems are!!

Good luck

 

[TJ]

I should have told you also, first thing to do before anything else, boot to
the Windows XP Cd-Rom, choose R for Recovery Console, it should list one
windows installation, select it and login with the administrator password
that was created at install (may be just blank). Type:

chkdsk c: /r

This may do the trick, it's at least worth a try. It takes a while to run
but let it finish and see what happens.

Last night I shut down my Presario 2550 (Windows XP Pro SP1) normally,

with no problems, and today, when I turned it on, everything froze up at the
blue screen where the accounts and MS sound usually appear. I have tried
starting it up in safe mode, using the "last known good configuration", and
pretty much everything else that's available on the screen you get when you
hit F8 but startup freezes in the same place very time.

I don't think I can do an In Place Upgrade b/c when I sent the laptop to

HP a few months ago (for a hard drive problem - they replaced it) they
installed XP Pro but I bought the machine with XP Home. They didn't send me
CDs for XP Pro so I only have the one that came with the laptop and hence,
XP Home.

I also tried booting from Norton Ghost CD and the original XP Home CD

but
it seems as though using those options I'll lose all of my data.

Is there any way to save my data? I really don't want to lose my photos.....
Thanks to anyone who can help.

You could try this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];316941

and follow the instructions to "Install Windows XP in a new folder". This
is called a parallel installation. Basically you would have two Windows
folders (call the new one WinXP or something). The hope is that you could
then boot into the new parallel WinXP and save your data. I don't know for
a fact that you could have different Pro and Home installs in parallel but I
don't see why not either.

However, before I were to do the above, I would get something like Spinrite
(www.grc.com), run it at Level 2, 3, or 4, and see if it can find and repair
any problems with the drive. I wouldn't be surprised if the goons at HP
didn't actually replace your old drive, they probably just ran some disk
software to mark the bad sectors then reformatted and installed XP Pro and
shipped it back to you. The problem is that once there's bad sectors, the
drive is already on it's way down hill and if they left the same drive in,
it could be screwed up again. Spinrite may help with this.

A third option, go out and buy a new hard drive, and connect it as the
primary drive in your machine. Move the old drive to secondary. Do a clean
XP Home install on the new drive. Boot into the new Windows, and recover
your data off the old drive.

Finally, if you have a floppy drive, you could use another computer to
create a Bootable DOS floppy and boot into DOS on your machine, then recover
your data that way. This won't work if your Hard Drive is formatted as NTFS
because I don't think DOS can read NTFS.

Please proceed at your own risk, but I just wanted to throw some options
your way. Maybe discuss these with someone you trust who knows a lot about
computers. I know how frustrating these types of problems are!!

Good luck

 

[Guest]

TJ, thanks for both of your answers. I can't try anything right now but will do it tomorrow morning when I have a block of time free. I'm just terrifed of trying something and losing all of my data!