[frajo]

My Dell Latitude D620 laptop (Intel Core 2 1.83GB, 3GB RAM, 160GB HDD) just shows the splash screen (scrolling blue bar) for about 10mins then sits there with a black screen and a mouse cursor. The cursor is active but nothing to click on. It won't go into safe mode. Well it does, but just the same as above but with 'Safe Mode' in the 4 corners. Again can't do anything. The BIOS shows everything is OK, CPU, HDD, memory, etc. OK. Paragon Rescue Kit did nothing and a Universal Boot CD I tried tested everything OK. An Ebay sale and no disks came with it.

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Hello and welcome.

Does pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL once you get to this stage bring up the Task Manager?

Cheers

[Troy]

Hello and welcome.

Does pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL once you get to this stage bring up the Task Manager?

Cheers

[frajo]

Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing at any stage, not even rebooting it.

[phillpower2]

Hi frajo
Can you get into the BIOS by tapping the F2 key whilst the computer is booting, this important as you will need to be able to change the boot sequence to the CD drive first and the HDD second, save the settings by pressing F10 and then Y to accept the changes;


If you have your Windows CD

• Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD and assure that your CD-ROM drive is capable of booting the CD.
• Once you have booted from CD, You’re going to proceed until you see the following screen, at which point you will press the "R" key to enter the recovery console
  :
• You will be prompted to select one of the listed Windows installation (typically number "1").
• Select the installation number, and hit Enter.If there is an administrator password for the administrator account fill out the password and hit enter.By default you can leave this blank and hit enter.(If it does have a password and you don't know it, you're out of luck).You will be greeted with this screen, which indicates a recovery console at the ready
  :
• Please make sure you follow the instructions of this guide exactly as given or you might risk more problems.NOTE; Make sure you press Enter after each command.Make sure all commands are exactly as shown in this guide, including "spaces".First, we will start off with these 6 commands.

  CD..ATTRIB -H C:\boot.iniATTRIB -S C:\boot.iniATRIB -R C:\boot.inidel boot.iniBOOTCFG /Rebuild

  Note about the above command.BOOTCFG /REBUILD will search for pre-existing installations of Windows XP and rebuilds sundry essential components of the Windows operating system, recompiles the BOOT.INI file and corrects a litany of common Windows errors.For the Enter Load Identifier portion of this command, you should enter the name of the operating system you have installed. If, for example, you are using Windows XP Home, you could type Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition for the identifier (it's not crucial, however what the name is, as long, as it's meaningful).For the OS Load Option portion of this command, you should enter the following: /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTINIt is very important that you do one or both of the following two things:Here is what you should see:
  
• The following command verifies the integrity of the hard drive containing the Windows XP installation. While this step is not an essential function in our process, it’s still good to be sure that the drive is physically capable of running windows and that it contains no bad sectors or other corruptions that might be causing issues.Take note that this scan might take a long while. Leave it running uninterrupted!CHKDSK /R
• This last command writes a new boot sector to the hard drive and cleans up all the loose ends we created by rebuilding the BOOT.INI file and the system files. When the Windows Recovery Console asks you if you are Sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ? just hit "Y" and hit Enter to confirm your decision:FIXBOOT
• It’s time to reboot your PC by typing:EXIT and pressing Enter.

With any luck, your PC will boot successfully into Windows XP as if your various DLL, Hive, EXE and NTLDR errors never existed.
If you don't have Windows CD
Please download ARCDC from Artellos.com.

• Double click ARCDC.exe
• Follow the dialog until you see 6 options. Please pick: Windows Professional SP2 & SP3
• You will be prompted with a Terms of Use by Microsoft, please accept.
• You will see a few dos screens flash by, this is normal.
• Next you will be able to choose to add extra files. Select the Default Files.
• The last window will allow you to burn the disk using BurnCDCC

Then, follow instructions from Step #1 above.

EDIT: I should have said please see If you don't have Windows CD at the foot of the page.

Edited by phillpower2, 01 September 2011 - 12:47 PM.

[frajo]

Thanks for that. However, I was just about to execute the first command CD..ATTRIB -H C:\boot.iniATTRIB -S C:\boot.iniATRIB -R C:\boot.inidel boot.iniBOOTCFG /Rebuild when I noticed that the 3rd use of ATTRIB only had one T. Since you emphasized the importance of accuracy in entering this, I thought I'd better check first. Is it just a 'typo'?

[phillpower2]

No worries, in your OP you said "An Ebay sale and no disks came with it."
You must have a Windows disk to use the first option and this was why I edited my reply which said"EDIT: I should have said please see If you don't have Windows CD at the foot of the page" sorry for the confusion but can you go back to my first reply, bottom of the page, thanks.

EDIT: You are correct that is a typo it should be;
CD..ATTRIB -H C:\boot.iniATTRIB -S C:\boot.iniATTRIB -R C:\boot.inidel boot.iniBOOTCFG /Rebuild
Thank you for highlighting this in any event

Edited by phillpower2, 02 September 2011 - 01:29 AM.

[frajo]

It has the command prompt 'C:\WINDOWS>', but on entering that long command line you gave me, it says 'The command is not recognised'. Harking back to my MSDOS days I remember 'CD' is a command as is 'ATTRIB', but not 'CD..ATTRIB'.

Typing 'HELP' at the prompt shows that 'CD ..' (with a space) changes to the root directory so perhaps it should read:

CD .. (to switch to C:\)
followed by:

ATTRIB -H C:\boot.iniATTRIB -S C:\boot.iniATTRIB -R C:\boot.inidel boot.iniBOOTCFG /Rebuild

This would make more sense, but you're the expert.

[phillpower2]

Hi frajo
Have you made any progress and did you read post #6 including the EDIT: information.

[frajo]

Hi phillpower2

I managed to 'borrow' a Win XP Pro cd and was able to repair XP. However, none of the programs worked and it was soooo slow! In the end I bit the bullet and did a clean install. At least with Dell computers the asset tag takes you straight to the necessary drivers. All is well at the moment but I think the HDD is faulty so it may well come back to haunt me!

Thanks for your help, I've learnt a lot from this exercise.

We'll consider this post as closed. Is there something I need to do to close it?

Frajo

[phillpower2]

Before you consider the topic closed can you run the diagnostic tool appropriate to your brand of HDD, available @
http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287 once you are completely happy I will ask a member of staff to consider your topic as closed/solved.

[frajo]

Hi phillpower2

Thanks for the link. The test showed 269 bad sectors which is only 0.00008% of the total so I won't take any more action at the moment. I'm happy to now close this topic.

Thanks for your help.

frj100

[Troy]

If I have one faulty sector, I replace the drive. Drives are cheap enough these days.

[frajo]

Fair comment. I'll discuss it with the laptop owner. At least I know what I'm doing now!