[kelvint]

Hi, I hope you guys can help and I really appreciate anything you can advise me on.

My wife and I have identical laptops (Dell Latitude D610)
mine seems to be fine, but the other day when she turned hers on it came up with the Error loading operating system message.

I have read through numerous threads about this and have tried the F2 and F12 keys on start up. I have also run diagnostics and there were no issues raised. I saw that it could be something to do with the Bios, but not sure what to do about that.

We are both running McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise Ver 8.5i, which is update regularly.

The laptop is mainly used for accounts using Excel 2003. The problem seems to be very random as the laptop was working fine in the day, it was shut down as normal and then a few hours later when it was rebooted the message came up.

I do not have any windows disks or recovery disks, which makes me feel a little stupid now. Is there anything you can suggest to me that is specific to this type of problem.

I hope you can help

Kelv

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Hi kelvint, welcome to G2G.

Can you post the EXACT error message please? It's quite possible that running chkdsk from the Recovery Console will fix this but I need the exact message to know.

[Ztruker]

Hi kelvint, welcome to G2G.

Can you post the EXACT error message please? It's quite possible that running chkdsk from the Recovery Console will fix this but I need the exact message to know.

[kelvint]

Hi, Thanks for your reply!!

Ok so I have managed to get to the recovery console and run CHKDSK. Other than the Error Loading Operating System at startup, the only other message I get (from running CHKDSK) is:
The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems

I have used chkdsk /R, chkdsk /P and chkdsk /f (although f was not recognised)

The disk is not partitioned so I only have c:

Whilst in recovery console I did try to read the directory and it came up with the following message:

Directory of C:\
An error occurred during directory enumeration.

Not really sure what else to do. I am going to try and

For information I have managed to find out that I have the following HDD:
Seagate ST960822A
60GB

[happyrock]

backup all your data first..just in case the drive dies..

then go here and get the seagate sea tools...because you have a laptop get the .ISO and run the tests from the cd drive

[kelvint]

Hi thanks for your input, there is nothing of great importance on the HD so I have gone ahead and started running the test. The basic test did not show any problems, so I will go through and run long tests and check advanced features and report back to you.

Thanks again
Kelvin

[happyrock]

if you can't get to recovery console...then go here and get rc.iso...it has the recovery console on it ...try fixboot and fixmbr

Edited by happyrck, 12 March 2008 - 09:30 AM.

[kelvint]

Great thanks, Ihave just completed the long test on the Seatools programme and the test was passed. I'll try Fixboot and fixmbr now and report straight back

Cheers

[kelvint]

ok I did the fixboot (fixboot c:) and that seemed to work ok, then I tried to do fixmbr and it asked me for the administrator password. I have not set one up and I tried just pressing enter, using password, and admin. After this it said I had mad 3 wrong entries and I cannot go any further.

So I rebooted and now windows does startup.
I get the long in screen (again no password is set, so just ok past this)
the desktop is there, but no windows task frame at the bottoms of the screen.

I can access my computer pressing windows button and e. But it is not running properly.

I can also see that all the files are there, however I tried to run a programme from my desktop and it did not work

[kelvint]

Hi one more update for you......
I have since tried to reboot again and I get to the windows XP screen, which is a blue screen now and going through with pages of messages as follows:

Replacing invalid security ID with Default security id for file xxxx

I am letting it go through the files, at the moment it is going on through file 33300 and on

[happyrock]

try the fixes here...
you could also try opening a new user account with admin rights (name it something other than the one now)..see if it has the same problem...

[kelvint]

Oh dear I am sorry about this, one running the Task Bar repair tool it came up with the following error:

Run-Time error '462'
The remote server machine does not exist or is unavailable

I have also noticed in task manager that there are only 20 processes running, usually on the machine there were around 40 or so.

[happyrock]

did you try opening a new user account...

the Run-Time error '462' is related to excel...see here

Edited by happyrck, 12 March 2008 - 03:46 PM.

[kelvint]

sorry yes I did try to do that, but was unable to. I may be looking in the wrong place?
I opened control panel and clicked user accounts, however the window opens up but is blank, only showing Back, forward and Home icons at the top. The rest of the window is blank and after some time still does not populate

[happyrock]

your going to have to do a repair...how to is here...

you will have to borrow someones copy of xp...it has to be the same flavor...if you have xp pro it must be the same...it also can't be a restore disk...get a OEM or retail..

[kelvint]

Thanks for your help so far, i had a feeling that I would need to do this in the end. One of those things were you fix one thing and realise that something else is still wrong. I will do the repair now if I can and let you know how I get on.