Here's the situation. I'm working on my buddies computer. He got an error message that says that an attempt has been made to hijack his computer. When he brought it over I started windows Normally and it booted up. However, everything in the start menu is gone. I wasn't able to get to the control panel, I wasn't able to get to the run command, I wasn't able to get to desktop properties it said it has been disabled by system administrator. I also didn't have the option to switch users... I could only shut down.

I shut down the computer and tried to boot in Safe Mode. It loads all the files on the screen and it goes to a black screen with the "Safe Mode" in all 4 corners and the (windows xp home sp2 ect across the top) and it just freezes there. It wont go to the screen.

I next tried to start from Last Known Configuration. It got to the Windows XP page with the status bar going back and forth. Once it passed that screen it goes to a black screen and sits there (you can see a slight color change in the shade of black.)

I next tried to boot from Windows XP Home disc. It loads the disc... and then it says (Windows is now starting up) on the blue Windows XP page... then it immediately switches screens and goes to the Windows ® page. Since I don't want to recover Windows XP at this point I just hit F3 to exit.

I then tried to start windows normally again. It gets past the Windows XP (scroll bar) page and then sits on black screen. I let it sit for a while and after about 20 minutes the Windows XP page came up where you select which user to log onto... but it was frozen and would not finish booting.

This is where I'm at. I have no clue what to do next. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

nofx1728

Hey! From the description you gave, sounds like you were able to boot up into Safe Mode.. It also sounds like the Last Known Configuration wasn't any good.. Kinda sounds to me like you have a hard disk problem.. It always sucks when that happens! I had a similar problem not too long ago.. And- unfortunately for me, I didn't have a current backup.. I did some searches and luckily, I came across some software that let me transfer my files to another machine across a network! The software was Selkie Rescue. Once I had all my files, I got a new HD. Good luck!

Na... I can't boot in Safe Mode. It just sits on a screen that is all black frozen. It has the safe mode text in all 4 corners.. but I can't manipulate anything... It's all black. It never even reaches the page to choose which user to sign in as.

first ...try going into the bios...set the default or safe settings...also set the boot order to the cd drive first...then the hd
no joy...
slave the drive to a working computer...get any data off you/he can't live without...
try running a repair on the drive
no joy
just bite the bullet and format the drive after doing the back up..and reinstall windows

This post has been edited by happyrck: May 28 2008, 05:25 PM

Unless you want to save data from the hard drive, the next step is to download the HD makers software that you can use to make a bootable CD from. You will then procede use the bootable utility CD to write all "0"s to the hard drive and then reformat the drive with the windows XP disk. You should be able to install XP from the CD then.

SRX660

I'm going to try them options out now. Thanks for the replies.