A friend has asked me to set up a really old computer, a dell dimension 4300s. It was originally running windows xp, and that has been completely screwed up. It blue screens withing 10 seconds of booting normally or safe mode. I tried to reinstall xp with an original disk, but the computer refuses to boot from CD. how to get it to boot so I can reinstall?
View 8 Repliesmy copy of win 7 was getting increasingly ropey the other week (kept freezing etc.) but i was able to start it in safe mode. now it won't boot at all, when i try to start it form the hard disc it says 'loading files' with a white bar along the bottom which crawls up, i have left this for hours with no joy. when i try to reinstall it gets as far as letting me select the language and then just hangs with the busy mouse icon, again i have left for ages with no joy. so the OS seems to be corrupted and sadly i have files on the OS section of the disc (yes i know....backup!) which i need.
so i assume i somehow need to get another OS to work to back my stuff up and then format the hard disc.
i saw you can in theory run linux from a memory stick, enabling me to back the files up. running xp from a stick is another option which i tried but my laptop didn't seem to boot from it, despite being set to do so. i have another laptop, aswell as a device which can use a sata/ide hard disc as usb disc, could i maybe remove the hard disc and do this ?
it's an HP 625 laptop with windows 7 32-bit pro.
A couple weekends ago when I was using my laptop, I fell asleep and awoke to find that it had turned itself off. I rebooted it to find that after the BIOS screen, nothing happened: I just got a blank screen with a cursor. I have seen this thread but unlike the fellow there, I had no problems at all just doing a clean install from a USB drive, as I'd done the same only a week or two before and didn't exactly have much data to lose. The install went completely fine, including the two restarts required, right up to the "Welcome" screen after connecting to a network, upon which it went to "Shutting down", did so, and I was once again back where I'd started, with the blank screen and flashing, immobile cursor and nothing else.I've tried re-creating my bootable USB drive, and the sfc /scannow command in Windows Repair options wouldn't run, saying that I have a process already running that requires Windows to restart (which I can't do, and which doesn't go away even after yet another reinstall).I've tried reformatting and recreating the partition (I have just the one) before installing as well.The laptop is fairly old: a four-year old Acer Aspire:
2GB RAM
Pentium Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz
Nvidia 7000 (256 MB)
All I know off the top of my head; will give more info if it's needed.Because I was able to install Windows 7 completely right up to the Welcome screen after which my desktop should have been prepared,I don't think this is a hard drive issue.When reinstalling Windows 7 on it,it recognized that Windows 7 was already on it and correctly gave me the size and space remaining on the drive.
About a month ago I had to reinstall Windows 7 Home Premium because it had the win64/sirefef virus. Security essentials would not work and neither would the windows firewall, etc.I have the virus again somehow, but this time when I try to boot it into safe mode and do a system restore or back up my files I can't - it says windows restore won't work and there is a critical error and will restart in 1 minute (this happened last time as well except not in safe mode and I was able to do the restore - but the critical error was occurring in regular mode). How do I backup my files (I have new files since the last time) and reinstall without the discs?
View 6 Replies View RelatedMy laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 has an annoying problem.
Each time the machine is booted all installed printers disappear and need to be reinstalled. This goes both for physical printers and .pdf printers.
I have an HP pavilion dv4-1555dx laptop that I was trying to install Linux mint 10 gnome on a PNY 8GB flash drive, I forgot to have Linux install grub to the flash drive, so it ended up installing grub to the HDD, now I need to reinstall the windows 7 boot loader but HP didn't send a windows 7 boot disk with the system (OEM windows 7) so I can't jut boot the cd and use the recovery counsel unless there is somewhere online that I can get an iso from, or is there another way?
View 2 Replies View RelatedSo, had to install XP beside Windows 7 64bit... Windows 7 64bit was installed while in BIOS hdd was set as AHCI.To install XP, I've to put it to IDE. Now if I put AHCI i can boot in Windows 7, but not in XP(BSOD), if I put IDE can't boot in Windows 7(BSOD), can in XP. Downloaded AHCI driver for my MB (MSI P55-GD55) and can't install them in XP, says no system requirements.What to do? Is there a way to boot with IDE to windows 7 64bit without reinstall?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI recently installed Windows 7 professional and had some problems with my first install, so I decided to reinstall. In the course of getting everything working on the the second install the Windows Boot Manager comes up everytime I turn on the computer.
It is very strange because: I have only Windows 7 installed on my computer and no other OS. The only selection is one instance of Windows 7 (I know sometimes when you reinstall the same OS will be listed twice, this is not the case for me) there is no countdown timer to automatically start windows. I have to press the enter key or it just stays there. Other than that, windows 7 is working fine for me. It is very annoying since I sometimes leave the computer after I turn it on and when I'm back it still is on the Boot Manager.
These are the things I have tried to get it working: I've went to msconfig-->Boot Tab and looked to see if there was a more than one OS listed. There is only one instance of Windows 7 listed. I went to my computer properties-->advanced system settings-->advanced and set the boot manager to not run, but it still comes up even after I change this setting I also tried reinstalling windows 7 twice. Once with just formatting the partition. Once with deleting the partition and recreating it before the install.
My PC had a single hard drive with 300Gig. (I will refer to it as original HD64) Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit installed. Worked fine for a year or two. Eventually started crashing randomly, attempted lots of fixes but was reliably informed that it could be my hard drive. I decided I would be best with a new HDD and a fresh install. Bought a new hard drive. 250Gig (Will refer to it as new HD32). Unplugged originalHD64 from sata cable and power. Plugged in newHD32 into sata cable.
Inserted bootable USB flash drive with windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit on it. Went through full install including partition creation etc. Install crashed part way through but I think the dog knocked the power lead. Restarted install. Everything seemed to install fine. Plugged in original HD64 into second sata slot. Changed boot priority to New HD32. Booted fine.
Clicked on >Computer and found new HD32 as C: drive and Old HD64 as D: as I wanted it to be.
So far so good. But on next boot the CHKDSK thing ran. Then it booted ok. CHKDSK ran on next boot also. Then I managed too boot normally but realised there were a couple of things not working properly in the fresh install. Things like Windows Picture viewer would not open anything at all and a couple of other issues. And it was especially annoying that CHKDSK kept running. I asked for advice and was told that I should probably just format the new HD32 and resintall from fresh incase the install had somehow gone wrong.
So, I changed the boot order to Old HD64 and logged into my old windows OS which I had left installed in case anything went wrong. From there I navigated to disk management and formatted and repartitioned the NEW HD32 disk. Now I unplugged Old HD64. Plugged in bootable USB flash drive and tried to follow the exact same steps as I followed last time. But instead of going through the windows install I just get ... "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible" (and some other text viewable in the following link).
Here is an example image of the screen I get... The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible error 0xc000000f on HP Notebooks - Tricks Guide
So I reboot.
Press F8 to select boot device.
Choose USB flash drive.
I have unplugged the New HD32 and plugged in the old HD64 and done the same thing just to test if its a HD issue but I get the same problem.
I'm still trying to get a hang of how UEFI works. I did take a look at it when I went to install my OS (And again when i got a SSD), but I couldn't make heads or tails of it and used BIOS.
does UEFI make a drastic difference over BIOS, and can I convert without having to do a complete wipe and install? or how would go about switching to EFI, or is it worth it?
Just today I needed to reinstall XP on the same partition that it was on. Now my problem is that because of the reinstall, the bootloader that Windows 7 changed is now gone and I no longer have the option to select Win 7 during bootup.
Is there away to get the option back without having to re-install Windows 7 all over again?
Currently i have two operating system on my PC. Seven is installed on partition C: and XP on partition D:. I would like to reinstall XP, but from what i know, if i do it using normal/standard installation, i will loose the pointer at seven. How can i reinstall XP and keep untouched Seven?
View 4 Replies View RelatedProblem description: Windows 7 fails to boot. I was playing a game when I was no longer to input anything (kb/mouse stopped working) although animations and sound continued. I restarted and the windows 7 animation appears, plays for awhile then freezes. I can start in safemode but that's it. Attempting to run the recovery tool gives me a "windows loading" screen then goes to a black screen. On my initial install of windows 7 on a brand new HD a week ago I had no problems getting it up and running.
Attempted fixes: System restore. Last good configuration. Uninstall video drivers. I tried doing a new install but all having the DVD in does is give me "loading windows" screen prior to freezing at the windows 7 animation. I tried putting in a vista disk and I get a similar problem, it hangs at the loading windows animated bar, but without the logo. I even tried putting in a brand new HD and disconnecting the old one and it STILL starts trying to load windows 7 (with the install dvd in), and it will still freeze with the vista disk in.
Each time the machine is booted all installed printers disappear and need to be reinstalled. This goes both for physical printers and .pdf printers.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI have a laptop that came with windows 7 installed. It has single hard drive which I have sectioned into c drive and d drive. I have made this laptop dual boot with windows 7 which was already installed and server 2008r2. My server 2008r2 copy is about to expire.So I will have to reinstall the server 2008r2. I am little confused because when I log onto server 2008r2, the C drive becomes the drive where windows(server2008r2) is installed. And similarly when I boot into windows 7 then c drive becomes where windows(windows 7) is installed. So if I were to keep windows 7 intact and reinstall server 2008r2 then,what exact steps will I have to follow to just reinstall a fresh copy of server 2008r2 trial valid again for 6 months? Please guide me. I am totally confused and dont know how to do it.I have important data on laptop so don't want to loose it.
View 4 Replies View Relatedi recently got a new SSD and I've installed windows 7 home premium on it. However whenever i boot into my SSD's windows 7, it says that boot manager is missing. In order to boot into windows 7, i would have to change my first boot to my CD, when it asks me to press something to boot cd, i would just leave it. It would then come to a page that allows me to choose from the windows 7 installed on my SSD and the windows 7 installed on my old hard drive.
View 4 Replies View Related6 months ago I installed windows 7 on a new PC I built. I then decided to switch to a 64 bit system which I did. I bought another HDD and decide to add a second drive with windows XP.I ended up with a system which had windows 7 shown twice on boot up and only one would bring up windows 7. Windows XP was missing. I removed the second drive and it worked fine but I still had 2 Win 7 prompts on boot up.I have a virus or root kit which I can't find or remove so I decided to format the C partition and reload windows 7. The problem is although I have the bios set to boot from the cd with the Win 7 disk, it comes up with the boot manager missing message and I can't get around this.I tried another HDD and get the same message. How do I get rid of this problem where i can re install win 7?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI recently got a new ssd and installed Windows 7 on it (I used the oem code on the bottom of my laptop [Lenovo Y580] along with the iso from digitalriver). It's been... well, as good as you can expect windows to be up until yesterday. When I booted the laptop into Windows, I had no internet despite having an ethernet cable connected. I checked to make sure it wasn't just my router. Sure enough, wifi and ethernet work perfectly in Ubuntu. I went into windows again and checked if I had the latest drivers. I did, so I tried reinstalling them and everything worked fine. Until I restarted. Every single time I restart I need to reinstall my wifi and ethernet drivers. It takes seconds, but it's still annoying and shouldn't be happening.
View 1 Replies View RelatedCan I use the Hirens BootCD (HBCD) to reinstal windows 7. My windows is jacked up. There are no restore points and I don't have the windows CD.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI used to have Windows 7 which works flawlessly... I used to have linux Mint 11 dual booting with Windows 7, I recently upgraded to Linux Mint 12 and from that upgrade I cannot see the windows 7 option in the boot menu.. I tried to reinstall the boot loader of windows 7 from the Windows 7 CD but when I press "Repair Your Computer" then it does not show any operating system existing on my computer... install the boot menu in the MBR again.
View 1 Replies View RelatedUpon turning on the computer, the recovery console loads - because windows will not boot.
Performed system dianogtic check - everything looks good.
Performed a system recovery successful but computer will not boot.
Performed a reset to factory settings successfully, but computer will not boot.
performed a command prompt reset - as was listed in another topic.
[code].....
I have an HP G62 laptop which came pre-installed with Windows 7. I would like to fully remove all data on the HDD and reinstall Windows 7.The 'Computer' section of the Start button shows the following HDD (not sure if these are partitions or not, but I'm assuming that they are!):
Local Disk ( C: )
Recovery ( D: )
HP_TOOLS ( F: )
I had a quick look at the D: drive and it showed a few setup files, all of which seem to be related to MSOFFICE. :-?I have been reading about data destruction programs that will absolutely wipe the drive and remove all data; I would like to do this and then reinstall Windows 7 so that the laptop effectively becomes a 'new' one.
1. How do I go about formatting the HDD with a data destruction program and then reinstall Win 7, since I do not have a bootable disc?
2. How reliable are such data destruction programs? Is there any margin of error? (I am a bit concerned about all the sensitive information that I have saved on my laptop such as bank details, family photos, etc.)
After formatting hard drive to reinstall windows 7 its saying missing boot?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI had 2 partitions on my HDD, one for windows 7 and one for backup. I wanted to reinstall windows but keep the backup partition so i put in my install dvd and booted up from it. At the manage partitions point i think i saw 5 partitions:
The 100mb for windows files
The windows Partition
The Backup Partition
A 1megabyte partition
And a zero megabyte partition.
I deleted all the partitions except the backup. I made a new one for windows. I procceed with the installation and everything went good,until when the installer rebooted the system. And thats where's my problem. The bios detects the HDD and stops there.It happend with me before with my 500gb hdd and thats why i bought this 1tb one but now i dont want to spend money again for that if i dont have to. Maybe i deleted a partition that was for the hdd to work propely? And if so is there anyway to reset that?
[code] Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot devic &press any key
View 4 Replies View RelatedI uninstalled WMP in windows 7 because it was not working correctly and when I tried to reinstall it windows media center and player will not reinstall.
HP compac
Windows 7 ultimate-service pack 1
Intel pentium 3.40 GHz
32 bit OS, 2.00 GB Ram
I removed Internet Explorer 9 after having some problems with it here on this 64 bit machine. Now Firefox has upgraded to version 5 and is no longer compatible with my Dishnetwork Slingplayer. This means I can't watch my Dish programming on the road.
Anyway if I try to reload IE9 it says it can't install because a newer version is already loaded. It does not appear on the program list under "add or remove programs"!
I have the google search engine redirect virus and am crossing my fingers that a solution can be found as i posted the appropriate logs inteh appropriate forum. However, based on the results from other members with the same problem, I am not too confident. So I guess my next option is to reinstall my Windows 7 pro, but i don't have the recovery disk ( I have a pavilion dv8 Hewlett packard). So do i go to the store and buy Windows 7 and reinstall it? One of my drives is called recovery, but i don't know what is in it. there is a folder called recovery, but when I click it, it gives me a warning that my partitions will be formatted. no files.
View 1 Replies View RelatedEvery time I rip a CD album I cannot add the album info & the album disappears off the the player once I've shut it down. Also an auto playlist I created a while back has stopped work & I can't delete it. I'm thinking I need to reinstall the player.
View 5 Replies View RelatedRecently my computer has a problem, I want to try to reinstall the system.But I do not know how to do! Who has a simple method to reinstall the system?I just need win7 Home Edition?
View 7 Replies View RelatedI just spent the last half day fixing a laptop, had to buy a new hard drive and reinstall the OS from recovery discs. (Win 7 64 bit, on Satellite Toshiba) I just noticed that I did not install it with a partition for the OS, Is this going to be a big problem at some point? I had checked off "Factory Settings" when installing, I just assumed that it would have installed with a partition. Before I go any further with this laptop I would like to have some input please. I just spent the last 3 hours installing updates and finally SP1.
View 9 Replies View Related