Boot failure

[Carl Stockwell]

Hi all
A friend just called with the following problem. He ran the defragger with
no problems, then removed a couple of unused games and then rebooted his
computer. The system will not boot. He gets the screen offering to boot
normal, safe mode, command prompt, etc, etc. Problem is that none of these
work. Once one option is selected, he gets a black and white screen a
blinking cursor and nothing else. He has been on phone with Dell Tech
support and they will talk him thru a recovery process but will not
guarantee that all documents will be retrieved intact. The system is a Dell
Dimension2300. When he was defragging the drive, Norton antiVirus was active
on the system. Something similar happened to another friend during a Norton
update. Is there any way to access the HD to get his documents folder off or
copied to another machine.

TIA
Carl

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Michael Stevens]

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.aspx

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

:

| Hi all
| A friend just called with the following problem. He ran the defragger with
| no problems, then removed a couple of unused games and then rebooted his
| computer. The system will not boot. He gets the screen offering to boot
| normal, safe mode, command prompt, etc, etc. Problem is that none of these
| work. Once one option is selected, he gets a black and white screen a
| blinking cursor and nothing else. He has been on phone with Dell Tech
| support and they will talk him thru a recovery process but will not
| guarantee that all documents will be retrieved intact. The system is a Dell
| Dimension2300. When he was defragging the drive, Norton antiVirus was active
| on the system. Something similar happened to another friend during a Norton
| update. Is there any way to access the HD to get his documents folder off or
| copied to another machine.
|
| TIA
| Carl

 

[Harry Ohrn]

If he has access to another Windows XP or Windows 2000 system he could
remove his hard drive and connect it as a slave to the other system then
copy files off his drive that way. The reason he needs XP or 2000 is due to
the NTFS file system that he likely has on his system. NTFS can't be read
from Windows 9x or Me. Once his drive is connected to the other system he
might need to take ownership of the files on his drive to copy them off
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

Another option, if he has both a regular CD-Rom drive and a separate
CD-Writer drive, is to use Knoppix to copy the files off his system to CD-R.
Knoppix is a huge download but a good troubleshooting tool you can read
about it here http://www.knoppix.net/docs/