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A little PC help?

SkyBell

SkyBell

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 7, 2006
6,606
226
Texas, unfortunately.
I've gone and dug out my somewhat old HP Pavilion machine, because I am in serious need of a Windows machine (or certain apps, games, etc.)

Anyway, I put it in the closest because of this;

When I turn it on, everything seems to load normally, it shows the Windows loading screen, etc. But after the loading screen, the screen goes black (the monitor doesn't turn off, it's just a black screen) and it will stay that way until I turn the computer off.

I can't for the life of me figure out what is wrong, does anyone have any ideas?
 
do you still have the OS disk? if so you can try doing a repair. order to your CD drive and boot from the OS disk. go through all the crap that windows does and then hit "R" for repair disk. see how that goes.

Peace:cool:
 
jonbravo77 said:
do you still have the OS disk? if so you can try doing a repair. order to your CD drive and boot from the OS disk. go through all the crap that windows does and then hit "R" for repair disk. see how that goes.

Peace:cool:
Click to expand...

Trust me, i would've done that already If I still had those disks. Unfortunately, I received this computer when I was 11, and very careless with items. As a result, I have absolutely no idea where the original disks are.:(
 
Cassie said:

When I hit "enter" on safe mode, immediaty, a bunch of command lines came up that began with "multi/partition" and then different things on those lines.
Click to expand...

Thats whats meant to happen, then you wait and it boots (well, tries to).

Why not install Parallels on your Mac?
 
install Ubunutu and Wine? Regardless you'll have to reinstall something, as that windows install seems fubarred
 
Ocassinally, it allows me to boot into safe mode (seriously, the prompt for it just comes up randomly) At this point, I am able to log in, and change settings. What exactly does this mean?
 
Hey Cassie i have the joy of fixing windows machines and look forward to coming home to my macs.

So when the system boots up normally? and then goes to a black screen? Can you get into safe mode?

Things to try

When the system is booting up normally it is possible that it is bluescreening or hanging. When you turn on the system, start pressing f8 (not constantly just once every 2 seconds should do it) You should then see a windows boot screen Stuff like, Start in safe mode, safe mode with networking support etc. The one you need is Disable Automatic restart.

Select that and see if it bluescreens or gives you any errors. Failing that, if you can boot fully into safe mode with out it failing, log in using on of the accounts ( must have admin rights), go to start, run and type msconfig ( and click ok or press enter)

Find the start up tab. once located disable everthing in there. Click Apply and OK. Reboot the system. I have had programs that attempt to load in the past which cause windows to hang whilst booting up normally.

Failing that, it could be a potential hardware failure. Open up the case and make sure the capacitors on the motherboard are not swollen or leaking. Find the diagnostic tools for your HDDs and run the test. Download memtest86 and run that on your system. If you have 2 ram sticks, the test must be run on one at a time. So you will need to remove the second one if you have it. You can also get a cd called Hirons boot CD that has a nice collection of tools, but there is program in t here called NTFS DOS, this will check the hdd for file system fault, much like disk utilty.

hope this helps!
 
Funny thing is, when I go to the boot menu (pressing F8) there is no option for Safe mode. (Other people have suggusted that as well) There is just "floppy", "hard drive", and "CDROM" However, I can get it to boot into safe mode by restarting it twice. Many people are telling me it may be a video card problem for some reason...
 
The control key gets you to safe mode in the windows 9x versions

The Hard drive, floppy and cd rom options. That is a boot menu screen supplied by your motherboard. I think you might be pressing the f8 key to quickely

When the bios screen clears, the start pressing F8.

Normally thats went you see, Verifying DMI data or updating ESCD - Then start pressing F8

If you can get a copy of the hirons disk. That has fixed a lot of file system problems that have prevented windows from booting. Bad sectors on a hard disk will also cause this problem.
 
Ok, a person on a different forum helped me fix it. Turns out it really was my video card. Sorry I couldn't answer this earlier, but the version of Windows was XP, and toolbox, I was pressing down F8 too fast.:eek: (Like right when it booted.)

Now I finally have a decent PC to work with, thanks for the help guys!:)
 
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