Help!!

[guardy06]

Hi all, having a problem with my pc this morning.

Started it up this morning and came up with the windows did not start successfully message.
Tried starting in safe mode but just does a loop and comes back to the same message. The windows logo comes up before it restarts.
I installed a new wireless pci card last week, but its been running fine since then.

I'm running XP MCE.

Please help.
Thanks.

[guardy06]

i've removed the wireless card, as thats the only thing i've changed recently. But still the same problem.

[guardy06]

If i try to do a system repair, it doesn't find my current installation of windows. although it does recognise my hard drive. It asks me to format the drive to do a fresh install. I have files on there i don't want to lose though.

[system7]

Quite often, clearing the CMOS by taking out the battery for 2 minutes with power unplugged, then running bios setup again will clear hardware issues.

But, often as not, reinstall is the only viable option. You have quite a lot of added hardware, and the issue could be almost anything.:(

[guardy06]

hmmm, will try the battery first. is the bios setup automatic?
I just found it weird that when i started the reinstall/repair, my current installation wasn't found.

[system7]

For your purposes, reentering time and date, loading bios defaults and setting CD to boot before HD will do. Then save and exit.

You really need to be comfortable with bios setup for any advanced troubleshooting. The thing to remember, is you can always get back to square one by pulling the battery, or loading defaults, so it's much less scary than you think. Bios always tells you how to navigate around but esc and enter and page up/down does most of it.

[guardy06]

Tried the battery and still the same. current windows installation still not been found. Might pick up a second internal hdd and do a clean install on there. That way i can still access my files on my current one. Is that right?

[system7]

I'd download and burn a Ubuntu or Knoppix Linux disk. Once you boot the CD-R, the files on the Hard Drive should be accessable. You then copy them to the external drive or USB stick.

Use ISOrecorder to do the burn.

[guardy06]

All sorted now. Plugged my external harddrive in to my laptop to see if it had been backing up ok and it had! (Don't know why i didn't do this earlier!) So formatted and did a clean install on my pc harddrive. Spent the best part of last night doing all the updates etc!! Think i'll still get a second hard-drive and use that for my picture/music/work etc files.

Thanks for your help again Steve.