- Nov 29, 2006
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Background: Awhile ago, a few months ago or so in fact, I got a lot of new stuff for my computer. New motherboard, video card and 1 GB of RAM. Everything has been going perfectly for quite awhile. I haven't done anything new my computer or changed any settings or anything, but one morning I turned it on and it was booting up normally but then it came to a screen before the loading Windows screen for XP (with the blue lines going across the bar) that said something to the effect of "Windows can't start properly because of either a hardware change or power problem. Choose the way you want to start Windows:" and it lists Safe Mode, Last Best Settings, Normally and a couple of others. I try to start it in every way but it just restarts and comes back to the same screen so I get down to the dirty work of trying to figure out what's going on. I tried to think of the very last thing that possibly could've changed something on my computer, and I couldn't think of anything except shutting it down. I'm generally too lazy to just tell the system to shut down so I always hold the power button until the computer cuts off all the power. I guess that this probably has something to do with it and I guess that it has caused a problem with the hard drive. It still recognizes everything correctly in the BIOS so I don't think it's a controller or IDE cable problem.
So I get on my other computer and download FreeBSD and burn it and pop it in and boot it up through the CD-ROM and it doesn't work. I guess that it might just be a problem with the CD or something, so I borrow SUSE Linux from someone and pop that in and it doesn't work once more, along with Ubuntu or anything I try to boot it up with. Next I took the hard drive and put it into another computer that has been working and booting worked on that one. Now I'm a little confused. If it's not the hard drive what is it? Next thing I consider is the controller once more so I take another hard drive and put it into the computer and try the same thing and it doesn't work in the same way. Then I put the old hard drive back in with a new IDE cable and in a different controller on the motherboard, FreeBSD loaded further than it did before but stopped and then when I restarted and tried again it wouldn't start, just like it didn't before. Then I changed the CD-ROM drive, hoping for a miracle, and then when it would go to the BIOS loading screen and said "Boot from CD:" it sat there and then said that it couldn't load from that CD, worse from before, doesn't even recognize that the CD-ROM has a CD in it. This is everything I have tried, and I've run out of ideas. Does anyone have any idea at all?
So I get on my other computer and download FreeBSD and burn it and pop it in and boot it up through the CD-ROM and it doesn't work. I guess that it might just be a problem with the CD or something, so I borrow SUSE Linux from someone and pop that in and it doesn't work once more, along with Ubuntu or anything I try to boot it up with. Next I took the hard drive and put it into another computer that has been working and booting worked on that one. Now I'm a little confused. If it's not the hard drive what is it? Next thing I consider is the controller once more so I take another hard drive and put it into the computer and try the same thing and it doesn't work in the same way. Then I put the old hard drive back in with a new IDE cable and in a different controller on the motherboard, FreeBSD loaded further than it did before but stopped and then when I restarted and tried again it wouldn't start, just like it didn't before. Then I changed the CD-ROM drive, hoping for a miracle, and then when it would go to the BIOS loading screen and said "Boot from CD:" it sat there and then said that it couldn't load from that CD, worse from before, doesn't even recognize that the CD-ROM has a CD in it. This is everything I have tried, and I've run out of ideas. Does anyone have any idea at all?