Help! Windows won’t start!! Part 1 – Corrupt Startup
Posted on 05. Oct, 2008 by Mike Halsey in crisis
Everybody’s worst nightmare, you switch on your PC and windows refuses to start. You either get the notorious Blue Screen of Death or a completely incomprehensible error. Maybe you’re getting a ‘no boot device’ message when it started perfectly well yesterday. No matter how many times you restart the machine, you still can’t get Windows to start. Maybe it’ll start in safe mode (you get to this by stabbing the F8 key on your keyboard just before the Windows logo appears during boot to get the safe mode start option, that is if Windows doesn’t know its screwed and brings it up anyway) but it still won’t boot into Windows normally.
Before reinstalling Windows completely, a time-consuming and often unnecessary business, there might be several options. First though let’s deal with how to prevent this situation in the first place, for this there are several short rules.
- Plug your PC into a surge protector. Many components inside the case run on micro-volts. When you switch it on a slight electrical surge can shoot through the mains. This is often enough to fry a component or two.
- Never switch your PC off directly at the mains. That is unless you really have to. The only times this will happen is if Windows has crashed and won’t shut down on its own. In this case press and hold the PC’s power button for four seconds it will shut down that way.
It is possible to rescue Windows from boot failures. This, as you would expect is much simpler with Windows Vista than with XP. Many of the XP recovery options require a trained technician, but the most important you can run yourself.
Rescuing Windows XP
- Boot the machine from your Windows XP install CD.
- When prompted to install a copy of Windows, press R instead to Repair Windows XP using the recovery console.
- It will bring up a list of your Windows installations. I would imagine you’ll only have the one, listed as 1 - C:\Windows. Type the number (ie. 1) and press enter.
- If you have a password set for your copy of Windows enter it and press return, if you don’t have a password just press return.
- There are now several things you can type to help fix Windows…
- CHKDSK C: where C: represents the location of your Windows installation. This will check the disk for faults and errors and hopefully repair any it finds.
- FIXMBR. The Master Boot Record is a file at the beginning of your hard drive that contains information about where partitions and operating systems sit on the disk. It can occasionally become corrupt, especially through virus infection. Typing FIXMBR and pressing return will rebuild this data.
- FIXBOOT C: where C: represents the location of your Windows installation. This will hopefully repair Windows’ boot files.
Rescuing Windows Vista
This I would imagine would also apply to future version of Windows. Microsoft made the whole rescue process far simpler with Vista, removing the recovery console completely and automating the process instead.
- Boot from your Windows Vista installation DVD.
- Click through the country selection options.
- On the next screen select Repair your computer.
- The automated system will now detect any start-up problems with Windows and attempt to repair them.
Your PC should now start happily
If you are still having problems then it looks like a restore or a reinstall is the order of the day. My series on backups will tell you how you can backup your complete Windows installation. This is made much simpler if you are using Windows Vista Business or Ultimate that have the handy Complete PC Restore software installed. If not, and if Microsoft don’t include this feature in all future versions of Windows (which frankly they should) then you will need third party software such as Acronis True Image to do this.
Next… Part 2 – Driver Problems
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