Hi. I have a two year old Compaq Presario, Intel Pentium D Processor 820, 1024 MB memory, 250 GB harddrive.
It now freezes at startup. When I start the computer, the word Compaq comes on the screen, then the page with the words Microsoft Corporation, with the green bars moving left to right, then the Windows Error Recovery page comes on with the choice of normal or safe mode.
It freezes in safe or normal mode. After going through these pages, it goes to a black screen and stays there. The mouse pointer moves though.
I don't know much about computers. Just enough to just get by.
Any advice about what to do will be greatly appreciated.
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Computer freezes at startup
(26 posts)
What version of Vista are you running? Has Vista ever worked on this pc? What speed is your cpu?
My best guess would be that this is a disk hardware problem. When you have the screen with the word "Compac", there should be an option to go into the BIOS (probably ESC key). Go there and see whether you can find hardware diagnostic programs. Then run the one for the disk and see whether it reports problems.
Since you bought the laptop two years ago, I am assuming you installed the OS yourself. Which leave three questions.
1) Did the install complete
2) Has it ever worked with Vista
3) Did you install anything recently
The most likely cause is either a driver or graphics card
First and foremost, do you have the vista media
You wil need to locate the vista media to run the windows Vista recovery option. Let us know when you have this and someone should be able to talk you through the process of running the best option for recovery based on the answered to teh above question
Regards, Alan
When the word Compaq showed up I pressed the Esc key. A page came up that said "Boot Menu - Select a boot first device - HDD group - raid-o :Samsung (numbers and letters) CD-ROM group - 3 rm master : HL (numbers and letters)". Is this what you were talking about? If it is, what do I do next?
Sorry, my mistake. I directed you to the wrong place. Let's start again: When Compac shows up, you have to go to the BOOT MENU (maybe F12 - but could be different on your system). There you may find the "Utility Partition" - usually last in the list that shows your (possible) boot devices. In this utility partition you will find the diagnose programs I talked about. Note: In the boot menu you can only navigate with the up/down and left/right arrows and ENTER (no cursor).
It is, however, possible that your PC manufacturer did not provide the said utilities. In that case, we'll have to regroup.
Hmm, there is not much to work with. You may have to reinstall your Vista. Do you have an installation disk from Compac or one you burnt from your recovery partition. Or do you still have a functioning recovery partition (usually D:\). We'll have to pick up the pieces tomorrow. It is midnight in my neck of the woods.
PS: Also list which important programs (like security programs, browsers, etc.) you have installed yourself. And let me know whether you have an external disk or at least a 4GB USB stick to which we could save your data.
Let's try this: Type REC into the Start/search field. See whether there is an entry above that says "Recovery disk creation". If yes, go there and follow the wizard. You have to have 2 DVD-R's (not CD's) handy to burn your Vista installation/recovery disk from there.
If that does not work, go to "Computer" and double click on the D:-disk. Tell me what you see in there (folder names).
Maybe you have a functioning recovery partition. The only way to find out, is to try it. As things are, you would loose all your data though. There are ways to save it with some Linux program loaded from CD. But I have never done that myself. If you have data to save, wè'll have to ask some friends how to do that. For the reinstallation of Vista from the recovery partition, I give you a little write-up that was made for a Gateway/E-Machines system. But the procedure is about the same for all Vista's. Note that point #1 we would have to address as said above.
1. Copy all your own files and folders to an external storage (Disc, USB stick even SD card - 1 GByte capacity should be ample - even 512 MB)
2. Shut the PC off
3. Turn the PC back on and keep hitting the F8 key repeatedly until the Advanced Boot Option Screen appears
4. Click "Repair Your Computer" –if you are not already on it, use the up and down arrows to maneuver to it and then press ENTER
5. Next you have to pick your country and click OK
6. On the "System Recovery Options Screen" click "Restore Application" (last option)
7. Follow the on-screen instructions
8. When prompted, click on "Full Factory Recovery"
9. Click "Next"
10. Click "Yes"
11. Go and have a cup of coffee - don't touch anything - for a while it seems like nothing is happening
12. After many minutes, recovery will complete and you click "Finish
I tried pushing F8 repeatedly after turning on my computer. The Advanced Boot Option page came up. I clicked on Repair Your Computer but I just ended up with a black screen. The other times I tried after that I got the Repair Computer page instead of the Advanced Boot Option page which also always ended on a black screen.
I just ordered the recovery disks for my model from Compaq which should be here in a week.
You may have a problem with your disk. Unfortunately there is little we can check since nothing seems to run. I would like to check that though. I think it is possible using some Linux iso disk. Unfortunately I am not really an expert in that. If it is OK with you, I will post your problem on the Forum such that the Linux guys can help us.
1. You apparently have another PC with which you could burn a disk - right?
2. Do you have data on the defunkt system that needs to be saved - if the disk allows to do that?
jcritchie, the best testing that you will be able to do involves creating bootable media on another computer system. If you know Windows and don't know Linux, make yourself a bootable VistaPE disc. Instructions and a download link are available here:
http://www.vistape.net/
You can test the hard drive(s) using diagnostics from the manufacturer. The manufacturer's name should show up in the BIOS where it identifies the hard drives.
Can you confirm that in your boot menu it says, "HDD Group - RAID 0"? RAID 0 (zero) means two discs with data striped between them. If that's what you have, then it complicates things.
In the Boot Menu it says "3rd Boot Device HDD Group". I can acess a page that says "Phoenix - Award Bios Cmos Setup Utility" that has pages you can go to. It has "Main, Advance, Power, Boot, Exit". I can also access the Boot Menu that says "Select a Boot First Device, HDD Group - Raid-o Samsung (numbers) CD-Rom Group - 3rd Master: (letters & numbers)" When I push the F11 key for System Recovery I get a white bar going left to right and then a black screen except now it's turned blue with the mouse pointer on it which had disappeared some time ago. I'm leaving it on for a while to see what happens.
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