[rogueleader105]

My Computer Specs:

Dell Inspiron 6000
Windows XP, service pack 3
160GB HD


Hello!

This morning I tried to boot up my laptop: it showed the initial BIOS screen, the progress bar filled, then it went to a black screen with a white blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

I waited several hours to see if anything would happen, nothing.

The green lights above the keyboard (such as Numlock, capslock) are lit up. I checked the battery pack and it is full. Last night the laptop was working just fine.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

EDIT: I have tried: removing battery pack, unplugging power cord then removing the harddrive. Then putting all these back and turning on the computer. Did not resolve the problem!

ALSO: I tried the diagnostics utility from the F12 menu. All tests passed (last test is DST Short Status test?), then a popup window appears that says:
"No diagnostic utility partition found. To run diagnostics insert your Dell "Drivers and Utilities" CD, then select OK to restart the system and boot off the cd."

I have not done this yet, I don't know if this will erase my harddrive??

Edited by rogueleader105, 19 September 2009 - 01:36 PM.

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If "drivers and utilities" cd is listed as such and not an XP OS cd, it should be safe to run. In my experiance with Dell, they do send seperate utilities and OS cd's.

I don't have a laptop but have had a Dell pc. It had seperate cd's. Personally, I would run the diagnostic cd.

[tjmcs]

If "drivers and utilities" cd is listed as such and not an XP OS cd, it should be safe to run. In my experiance with Dell, they do send seperate utilities and OS cd's.

I don't have a laptop but have had a Dell pc. It had seperate cd's. Personally, I would run the diagnostic cd.

[rogueleader105]

Do you mean that there is a repair function on the drivers/utilities cd?

Okay, I'm at another point in the saga (oh for $2500 to get that Macbook Pro! I'm so done with Windows )

After talking with Dell support, I went into the Restore function, did chkdsk \p and then fixboot c:

After this the computer loaded up! I thanked the Dell person hung up, walked into the other room and returned to find my computer TURNED OFF. I restarted it...and ran into the same problem. After /headdesking I tried the same thing in the restore function.

This time after loading up I ran into the error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt.
Windows root\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I can't remember the exact thing I did to fix this, but I think it involved copying system32 files in the Restore function. This didn't work, so I tried a Repair installation of Windows XP. After running through some errors, I finally got it to complete. I restarted my computer, got past the Bios loading screen, then to the Windows logo loading screen, then to a black screen, and then to....

blue screen of death -_-

"STOP: c000021a (Fatal System Error)"

ALL I want to do is somehow load the computer so I can pull my important files, and then I'm going to reformat the HD to resolve all of this. Is there any way to fix this, if only temporarily, so I can get my data?

Any help would be awesome! Cookies +!

[tjmcs]

There was a repair function on the utility disk that came with my pc. If your at this point, what do you have to lose? Follow the on-screen instructions after you boot from the utility disk and if it says it will reformat, stop. If it doesn't, keep going.

It has been a while since I had to use that disk, so I'm really not sure what all it says. The one time I had to use it, it did not erase. Don't have that computer anymore (when the harddrive starts smoking, you know you've got a problem). My fault not computers. Don't ask.

Also, see if you can defrag it and run ckdidk again. Pay attention to what it says about bad sectors. If it says you've got bad sectors, dead harddrive.

[rogueleader105]

Great! I used my MS Windows XP Service Pack 2 disk to do the repair install, and it worked! I backed up my files and now I'm reformatting to have a clean start. Thanks all!