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Any computer experts in the house?


SkinsNut73

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So last night I was doing some electrical work in my house and had to shut down the circuit breaker which powers my home PC. I shut the computer down properly, then disconnected the power. When I'm finished I flip the circuit breaker on, go upstairs and turn on the power strip and prepare to boot up....

System begins to startup and I see Windows XP Home Edition on the screen, that disappears and then the screen remains blank. Nothing. I tried restarting again...same result. Nothing.

So I tried going in and starting via Safe Mode. After I select that, screen goes blank. Nothing.

So I try Last Known Good Config. After I select that, screen goes blank. Nothing.

Anyone have an idea what could be wrong (cause the computer illiterate dummy sure has no idea), or know of a good website that might be able to guide me?

I was about 2 minutes away from taking it out in the driveway last night and smashing it with a sledgehammer. Probably would not have fixed the problem, but would have given me great satisfaction :)

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

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Doesnt that equate to erasing everything on the hard drive ?

No... there should be an option for "Repair" which keeps your files intact...

Did you unplug the cpu from the wall? You may have gotten a line spike when you flipped the breaker back on...

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No... there should be an option for "Repair" which keeps your files intact...

Did you unplug the cpu from the wall? You may have gotten a line spike when you flipped the breaker back on...

Yes, I did unplug from the wall....

I'm fooked...ain't I? :laugh:

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Doesnt that equate to erasing everything on the hard drive ?
Not necessarily. Boot to the disc, then choose repair. Go into the recovery console which is DOS.

From the C: prompt run CHKDSK /r and let it run until its done. It may take a while. Usually it will fix it.

This takes me back to my helpdesk days a couple years ago.:)

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No... there should be an option for "Repair" which keeps your files intact...

Did you unplug the cpu from the wall? You may have gotten a line spike when you flipped the breaker back on...

Thanks TB. "knock on wood", I have never had to deal with that problem.

EDIT:

Not necessarily. Boot to the disc, then choose repair. Go into the recovery console which is DOS.

From the C: prompt run CHKDSK /r and let it run until its done. It may take a while. Usually it will fix it.

This takes me back to my helpdesk days a couple years ago.:)

Appreciate the info. I am as clueless as far as how to fix the computer itself. But when I learn a program, I become a master within a year.

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Not necessarily. Boot to the disc, then choose repair. Go into the recovery console which is DOS.

From the C: prompt run CHKDSK /r and let it run until its done. It may take a while. Usually it will fix it.

This takes me back to my helpdesk days a couple years ago.:)

Thanks Z...I'll try that tonight when I get home. If it doesn't work, then I will drop the computer from my rooftop and see if that works :)

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Thanks Z...I'll try that tonight when I get home. If it doesn't work, then I will drop the computer from my rooftop and see if that works :)

By the way... for future reference...

When purchasing a pc, spend the extra $75 for XP PROFESSIONAL...

I purchase all of our pc's at my business... our rep from CDW said the Microsoft reps come in there all the time and say "God in Heaven don't sell the XP Home boxes if you can help it"...

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Thanks Z...I'll try that tonight when I get home. If it doesn't work, then I will drop the computer from my rooftop and see if that works :)

He has the right Idea if the problem is that you have bad sectors on your hard drive, if that doesn't work there is still something else you can do.

You could also try hitting enter at the first screen instead of "R" and then hit F8 when prompted with the Licence Agreement.

At that point Windows should search your hard drive for your previous installs of windows

If it finds it, you should see it give you the option to repair this installation,

It will display one install of windows and tell you what version you have. It will prompt you to hit "R" to repair the installation.

It will jump straight into the install after hitting "R".

What this does is replace all the operating system files on the system except for the registry.

This will apear as though it is installing windows fresh but don't worry it doesn't erase anything. This keeps you from losing any data or having to reinstall any programs.

IF YOU DO NOT GET THE SECOND OPTION TO REPAIR THEN DO NOT CONTINUE.

It will jump straight into the install after hitting "R". If you do not see the option to hit "R" and instead you see a list of partitions with one being called C:, then turn off the computer and take it to a computer repair shop.

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By the way... for future reference...

When purchasing a pc, spend the extra $75 for XP PROFESSIONAL...

I purchase all of our pc's at my business... our rep from CDW said the Microsoft reps come in there all the time and say "God in Heaven don't sell the XP Home boxes if you can help it"...

Of course they say that to you...They probably make more money on XP Pro. IMO, XP Home is fine for most people's home PC needs. Have you experienced otherwise?

Not to hijack the thread but have you seen how many versions of Vista they are going to have? (6)!!? :doh:

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Of course they say that to you...They probably make more money on XP Pro. IMO, XP Home is fine for most people's home PC needs. Have you experienced otherwise?

Not to hijack the thread but have you seen how many versions of Vista they are going to have? (6)!!? :doh:

Actually only 5 versions but who is counting...

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Of course they say that to you...They probably make more money on XP Pro. IMO, XP Home is fine for most people's home PC needs. Have you experienced otherwise?

Not to hijack the thread but have you seen how many versions of Vista they are going to have? (6)!!? :doh:

I doubt that for a couple of reasons... one, we only order the "Professional" version of any OS, so that is not an issue and two, he is a personal friend I have known for years...

I know what you are saying, but I happen to know the guy pretty well...

How much longer til Vista? We need to get it out there so it can be secure and working correctly in 2-3 years... :D

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Actually only 5 versions but who is counting...

Vista Business

Vista Enterprise

Vista Home Basic

Vista Home Premium

Vista Ultimate

Vista Starter

I think one of those is for Europe only or something. --EDIT--- I just read that they will release some of the above versions w/o Media player for some European countries.

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I doubt that for a couple of reasons... one, we only order the "Professional" version of any OS, so that is not an issue and two, he is a personal friend I have known for years...

I know what you are saying, but I happen to know the guy pretty well...

I don't use XP Home either (have a domain at home), so I also only use the Pro versions..

How much longer til Vista? We need to get it out there so it can be secure and working correctly in 2-3 years... :D

That should give us enough time to get rid of some of the NT and Win2kS boxes still kicking around at work.

I think we have hijacked this thread. I hope the guy with the original problem gets it working. It's problems like this that makes me keep an image of my wkst around on another HDD.

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Not necessarily. Boot to the disc, then choose repair. Go into the recovery console which is DOS.

From the C: prompt run CHKDSK /r and let it run until its done. It may take a while. Usually it will fix it.

This takes me back to my helpdesk days a couple years ago.:)

This worked. My compewter is back up and running :) Thanks Z and everyone else for your help.

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reset the cmos. on your MOBO, take out the cmos jumper. put it back in. it should fix the problem.

otherwise, check out www.hardforum.com. it should help you!

Sorry dude, but resetting the CMOS would have nothing to do with why he got a blank screen after seeing the windows splash screen, maybe if he wasn't getting anything on the screen at all...

Glad you got the pc working, chkdsk was the best suggestion by the time I had gotten here and I was gonna say the same thing but I decided to give you another thing to try in case that didn't work.

Having said that, I would keep an eye on your hard drive, if chkdsk /r worked for you that means you either had corrupted data or a bad sector, this may be nothing to worry about but it could be a warning sign of a hard drive going bad.

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Sorry dude, but resetting the CMOS would have nothing to do with why he got a blank screen after seeing the windows splash screen, maybe if he wasn't getting anything on the screen at all...

Glad you got the pc working, chkdsk was the best suggestion by the time I had gotten here and I was gonna say the same thing but I decided to give you another thing to try in case that didn't work.

Having said that, I would keep an eye on your hard drive, if chkdsk /r worked for you that means you either had corrupted data or a bad sector, this may be nothing to worry about but it could be a warning sign of a hard drive going bad.

And it should go without saying back up your data to cd or dvd frequently. :paranoid:

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