Can't Boot into Windows

[Neil]

I have a friend who has a laptop that will not boot. When she boots it with
the power cord plugged in, it starts to boot and then shuts off. With the
battery removed, it seems to work better, but still shuts off. Sometimes
she can get it to boot a little into Windows, but then gives her an error
message (see below), and then shuts down.

Though it seems to me to be a hardware issue, someone told her to
reinstall Windows (XP Home). So she put in the Windows disk, and it began
the reinstall. It actually got much further than it had in the past when
just trying to boot. So that made me think that maybe it was something
related to Windows.

She said she got to a part asking if she wanted to create a FAT partition
or something to that effect (she doesn't remember the actual prompt), and,
after that, the system shut down. Here's her actual message to me:

"I got a CD from Dell, to reload my Windows XP. I got my laptop to boot
from the CD. It loaded lots of files. Drivers and such. And now it
wants to put a FAT partition or something like that on. In order to do
that it will erase what I have on the hard drive. (I think) But then, when
I clicked ENTER the whole thing just went blank which makes me think -
yes - the power cord needs to be replaced. But I'm wondering do you think
the hard drive is okay if it's working this far, loading stuff on and
giving me options?

"AS before, when it starts without the CD booting it, which I can get it
to do if I have patience, it gives me the same error message of it shut
down to prevent damage to my computer and its a unbootable volume error
(I'm not sure of these words, it's something like that)."

My instinct at this point would be to reformat the C drive, then reinstall
Windows. Perhaps the hard drive just got corrupted and needs to be
reformatted.

Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions?

Also, is it possible to just boot from the Windows XP CD, without loading
Windows from the hard drive? Perhaps that might show whether it's a hard
drive or Windows problem or none of the above.

Thanks!

Neil

Well, I looked at the laptop first-hand tonight. I couldn't even get it to
turn on! By jiggling the wire, every once in a while I could get the lights
to flash for a second, but that was it. My son came and helped me (thank
goodness for kids, right?...) and found that by holding the wire straight
out at the point where it connected to the tip that inserted into the power
socket, he could get the power to stay on, and the laptop to boot.

We tried holding the wire straight out without pushing the tip; and we tried
pushing the tip without touching the wire. The former got it to turn on,
while the latter did nothing. So we concluded that the problem was with the
wire, and the socket itself was fine.

(Indeed, when one looked at the wire where it connected to the tip, one
could see that it was very loose, and would hang straight down. Obviously
some wires are loose in there. I surmise that she must have damaged it by
having the wire bent back, tucked under the laptop while she used it, or
something to that effect.)

Once the computer was able to remain on, with my son at the helm, holding
the wire steady, Windows booted fine -- except that it got to the message
that I believe she was originally talking about: "Unmountable boot volume...
Windows will shut down to prevent damage to the computer," with the blue
screen with white letters, etc.

So I figure that sometime when the computer shut down instantaneously,
either the hard drive was damaged, or at least the data on it got screwed
up.

Either way, we're ordering a new cable, and will go from there. Once that's
done, I guess the next thing would be to do a Windows reinstall with a
reformat, and see if that succeeds. The fact that (per my original message)
she had previously gotten to the point where Windows was going to recreate
the FAT partition, and then it just shut off, indicates that the hard drive
might be irreparably damaged. But, OTOH, she may have just jiggled the wire
when she hit the Enter key.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for your assistance. Will let you know how it
goes.

Neil

 

[Neil]

OK, so I just go back from trying the new power cable. The computer worked
fine with the new cable. Got to the same error of unmountable boot volume.
When into the R option from CD, ran chkdsk/r, took about an hour, and
finished with no errors. Restarted the computer without the CD, and
everything's fine! So, thanks, everyone, for your input!

Only one problem remains. I guess from all of her trying to start it with no
power, the battery got very low. Now the battery light on her laptop is
blinking red. And, when I got into Control Panel | Power Options, it says,
"Battery not found." So I'm guessing the battery is kaput. We're leaving it
plugged in overnight to see if hopefully the battery will come back to life.
But I'm guessing she's going to need a new battery.

Neil