blueboyitfc said:
After turning my computer on, and soon after the XP "Welcome" screen
appears
my screen turns Light Blue and nothing else happens. My colleague thinks
I have a problem and need to reload my XP, but the PC is a DELL and I am
afraid I will loose everything if I contact their help desk as it was pre
loaded.
Can anyone help a computer novice ?
Thanks..
You've forgotten to back up your important data to removable media? Burned
CD/DVD-Rs? Used an external hard drive? If the answer is yes, I'd get the
data now. It's completely possible to get data off a working hard drive
even if you can't boot into Windows. You can pull the hard drive, slave it
in working computer; or put it into an external drive enclosures; or boot
with a rescue system such as Knoppix or a Bart's PE and transfer the data
that way. I don't know if a "computer novice" would find that easy or not.
Once the data is safe, I'd try some troubleshooting steps.
1. Can you get into Safe Mode? Do this by repeatedly tapping the F8 key as
the computer is starting up.
a. Once in Safe Mode, you can see if the problem still occurs. If not, look
in Event Viewer (Start>Run>eventvwr.msc [enter]) for clues.
b. Or try a different user account.
c. Or run System Restore to before the problem occurred.
d. Or scan for viruses/malware.
2. If you can't get into Safe Mode, try Last Known Good Configuration from
the same menu as Safe Mode.
Of course, you told us nothing about your computer and its recent history so
these are just general suggestions. The cause could be hardware (failing
video card) or software, such as bad graphics drivers or a virus. There is
no way for us to guess from your post. Since you say you're a computer
novice, perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to take the machine to a
professional computer repair shop. I don't recommend BigComputerStore/Geek
Squad types of places.
If you still want to try and work it out with help from this newsgroup,
you'll need to fill in the blanks.
Malke
