today i booted up my computer and it failed to start up windows xp. Puzzled, i restarted again and got the same message. Blew some canned air to clear out dust, checked for loose cables, etc. Did i miss something? I have a hard time believing that a simple restart can corrupt the operating system.
Hard drive seems fine, the bios picks it up. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary before i shut down the comp previously. Before i fiddled with the cables, i made sure to ground myself, turn off the battery, and unplug the power cord.
So a few questions - 1) what could have caused something like this? I mean, if it were a bad sector, it would have told me there was an error in windows/config/xxxx, right? I doubt that the hard drive is the problem. The bios picks it up right away. I'll try to put it in my friend's comp as a slave.
2) Where do i go from here? I'd like to save reformatting as a last resort, seeing as how i have a ton of important files on it.
3) Are there any places where i can actually have a professional take a look at the hard drive ? I'd like to think i know a bit about computers, but i'm completely lost when it comes to matters like these.
Any help would be appreciated.
Edit : Had more time to search for similar topics and it seems like a lot of people are getting the same error message when they're installing a fresh XP. I, however, was not re-installing. Just booted up after last night and boom, error.
Edit 2 : Nevermind. Put in the windows xp cd again and tried the repair utility. Got a blue screen the 2nd time, failed to run 3rd time, and 4th time it found the error and fixed it. Go figure :\
Hard drive seems fine, the bios picks it up. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary before i shut down the comp previously. Before i fiddled with the cables, i made sure to ground myself, turn off the battery, and unplug the power cord.
So a few questions - 1) what could have caused something like this? I mean, if it were a bad sector, it would have told me there was an error in windows/config/xxxx, right? I doubt that the hard drive is the problem. The bios picks it up right away. I'll try to put it in my friend's comp as a slave.
2) Where do i go from here? I'd like to save reformatting as a last resort, seeing as how i have a ton of important files on it.
3) Are there any places where i can actually have a professional take a look at the hard drive ? I'd like to think i know a bit about computers, but i'm completely lost when it comes to matters like these.
Any help would be appreciated.
Edit : Had more time to search for similar topics and it seems like a lot of people are getting the same error message when they're installing a fresh XP. I, however, was not re-installing. Just booted up after last night and boom, error.
Edit 2 : Nevermind. Put in the windows xp cd again and tried the repair utility. Got a blue screen the 2nd time, failed to run 3rd time, and 4th time it found the error and fixed it. Go figure :\
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