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PC's gone t1ts up, please help!



Da

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Basically PC upstairs has decided to fook off and wander down the pub for a few bevvies, leaving my bro looking at a screen that wont respond and a mouse that does nothing :dapprove: The PC boots up apparently fine, enter your password and your user account loads up. Once it's gone thru the start up of all the programs etc, it just freezes - every time! You cannot press anything on the screen, the mouse does nothing other than move the pointer aimlessly round the screen. The keyboard, well that may as well not exist! Pah! Leaving just one option, switch off at tower and reboot. Had it in safe mode a few times now and done 2/3 restore points. Every time it comes back same or with worse problems! :dapprove:

Someone please help! :)
 
  Clio 1.4 16v
Sounds like explorer isn't starting up properley, once logged on, will control+alt+del work?
 
  Mazda MX5 1.8
in situations like this my 1st reaction is to try either safe mode or boot off DOS floppy (old skool) and run scan disk (or av/clean up programs if safe mode works)
 
  Clio 1.4 16v
If you can get it to boot up in safe mode, use RUN, then MSCONFIG, deselect any services and startup options that blatantly are'nt needed and try again, I had this problem and it was a peice of well hidden spyware that prevented explorer from opening and embedded itself into then startup folder.
 

Da

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ok, cheers for the help guys. Just in middle of a restoration so will give the MSCONFIG trick a try in a few mins. As for booting from floppy or CD this isn't possible as the PC didn't come with a hard copy of XP.
 
  Clio 1.4 16v
With the MSCONFIG method, when on the services tab, make sure you check the hide all microsoft services box, because if its recognised as a microsoft service then its pretty much gonna be needed
 

Da

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yep will do cheers andy. I just don't understand it, one minute PC's working fine. Next it's all gone Pete Tong! :S
 
  Clio 1.4 16v
Same with me mate, mine won't shut down, just crashes, thats really stumped me. Suppose it serves me right for constantly messing, spent a grand on building it and i'm constantly doing something to tweak it, I just can't leave it alone
 

Da

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still no luck... tried MSCONFIG switched off stuff not needed. It does load up ok now due to the restore but I cannot sort it out, it will not let me add or remove any programs and my wireless connection constantly sarts then stops then start up again... very frustrating!!!
 

Da

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still baffling me this! Been at it on and off a couple of hours tonight and it's like :banghead: :headno: :cry: someone please help me!
 

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
Are you able to do a reformat? Personally, I'd never waste hours on an issue like that. A clean (and much faster) XP O/S can be reinstalled in around 45mins flat. Ok, you need to reinstall any of your apps after that, but it really is worth it, imo.

I never, ever bother with restore points or Ghost images. Even with bulk buying the same spec PCs at work, one setup won't necessarily work on its identical twin. Again, you spend so much time trying to resolve the issue, you could have done a reformat in half the time.

On top of that, chipset, gfx and sound drivers usually update that often that they make the saved image out-of-date quite quickly.

D.
 
  Fabia vRS
this is quite a common problem that i've come across.

it is usually a corrupted user profile on xp.

go into safe mode and create a new user profile and then reboot the computer in normal mode and try entering windows with the new user profile.
 
Darren S said:
Are you able to do a reformat? Personally, I'd never waste hours on an issue like that. A clean (and much faster) XP O/S can be reinstalled in around 45mins flat. Ok, you need to reinstall any of your apps after that, but it really is worth it, imo.

I never, ever bother with restore points or Ghost images. Even with bulk buying the same spec PCs at work, one setup won't necessarily work on its identical twin. Again, you spend so much time trying to resolve the issue, you could have done a reformat in half the time.

On top of that, chipset, gfx and sound drivers usually update that often that they make the saved image out-of-date quite quickly.

D.

I dont agree with all of that, personally. Ghost images are great if you want to restore a virtual reinstall of Windows. By that I mean that if the image is taken after all the base drivers are installed and Windows is updated, restoring your base image is great because it takes far less effort to update windows and leaves you less vulnerable while doing so.

When I do a fresh install of an OS. I install chipset, and video drivers, install AVG, connect to the net and update windows. Then I ghost that bad boy so I have a good image to restore without the agro of updating my 3 year old copy of Windows (SP1!). Restoring images saved me a lot of time when I was having issues with TheBeast2 build :)

BTW I obviously uninstall Norton Ghost after taking the image :) I also only ever ghost my 10GB OS partition and nothing else. All my apps and data are on another disk/partition (any critical data just pasted to another physical disk). Need to keep that OS on it's own and on the outiside edge of the disk for max performance [/geek]
 

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
Fair point Roy. But we handle 190+ PCs here with multiple configs and different requirements on each. It's far easier to start with a clean slate (just the O/S specific to that machine) and then install the specific apps afterwards than to juggle different images files.

On top of that - you know what most users are like. Somehow, they manage to screw up NIC cards, gfx cards, etc and having old drivers installed for incorrect hardware is just asking for trouble.

Personally, I like to see what goes onto each PC with my own pork-pies.... ;)

D.
 


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