[Zayness]

Tonight my husband was on his gateway computer ( gateway's stink btw) and he was playing his online game as usual - computer is 3 yrs old & was running fine prior. Well it froze up on him in the middle of the game & wouldn't shut down with the usual control alt delete keys.

So he had to hold the power button a few seconds to get it to shut down. It shut down & he turned it back on but it books up to a black screen saying to start in safe mode, start normally or start at last known good settings (or something along those lines) so basically i hit every one & its a round & round cycle trying to boot up going to the gateway screen then the windows xp screen then that screen for booting up but it won't let you boot up in safe mode or normal or other.

I put in the system restore disk but it will not restore to a prior date only the whole thing & i really don't want to wipe the whole hard drive if i don't have to. Is there any way to get this to boot up in safe mode or be able to set back to a prior date.

Anyone have any clues????

Please help asap, thanks!!!!

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Hello Zayness, and welcome to Geeks To Go!

Do this for me please. We are going to run a chkdsk.

Boot up with your Windows XP CD.
When you see the menu, choose RECOVERY CONSOLE.
You will see a command prompt. If you did NOT set a password, just leave it blank and continue.
When you finally reach the RECOVERY CONSOLE and you just see a prompt blinking, type the following code in and press ENTER:

chkdsk /f /r

Let the scan run. This will take awhile. After it is done, take out the Windows XP CD and reboot the computer. Can you access Windows now?

[ultimateslacker2]

Hello Zayness, and welcome to Geeks To Go!

Do this for me please. We are going to run a chkdsk.

Boot up with your Windows XP CD.
When you see the menu, choose RECOVERY CONSOLE.
You will see a command prompt. If you did NOT set a password, just leave it blank and continue.
When you finally reach the RECOVERY CONSOLE and you just see a prompt blinking, type the following code in and press ENTER:

chkdsk /f /r

Let the scan run. This will take awhile. After it is done, take out the Windows XP CD and reboot the computer. Can you access Windows now?

[Zayness]

Ok my cd i have is the Gateway Restore cd - it says if you need to restore your computer to its original configuration use the Restore DVD. And that you will lose all that is on your hard drive.

But anyway i put it in & this is what it does. It boots to a screen that says:
System Restore Menu/Windows XP
1. Restore windows XP
2. Boot to command prompt from CD Rom

If i hit 2 then it goes to A:\>

so what do i do now?

[ultimateslacker2]

Type the line I just gave you

chkdsk /f /r

[Zayness]

I tried at the A:\> prompt typing in

chkdsk /f /r and it says invalid switch /f /r

are there space or anything in that ??? i can try again

we've never had trouble with this computer before so not sure what the heck happened???

[ultimateslacker2]

Ok well try this EXACTLY!

chkdsk /r

[Zayness]

Ok well that did something but not sure if it did what its suppose to. Only too a second & gave info:

Serial #
disk space
hidden files
user files
allocation units
memory &
bytes free

Is that what its suppose to do?

[ultimateslacker2]

Did the scan run completely?

[Zayness]

It didn't really scan just popped back with some numbers for the info i gave you above - took a couple seconds then went back to the A prompt.

[ultimateslacker2]

Did it help at all?

[Zayness]

well i haven't tried to reboot the computer - should i take the restore cd out & try to reboot?

How does one get to a recovery console? My restore cd doesn't seem to offer that option & can't boot up in safe mode.

What would cause this?

[Zayness]

i tried to reboot - still won't boot up

if i try to click boot up in safe mode it goes to a screen that has lines across it then switches to all this info that runs down screen & then goes in the circle again asking to start in safe mode, normal or last known configuration

but even though it says all that it won't boot up in any mode

[ultimateslacker2]

See if you can borrow a legit XP CD so we can run the repair.

[Zayness]

My restore xp cd isn't legit?

[ultimateslacker2]

It is a CD provided by the manufacturer. You need to try and get a legit full copy XP CD.