Gah computer problems suck

[makken]

Gah, i hate it when computers fail right when you need them the most.

Large project due tomorrow, all files are located on a laptop, and I can't seem to get it to boot now. It's running windows vista and the OS boots fine, but it hangs on the welcome screen, with a please wait sign, going for 15 minutes now. I can't log in or do anything.

Safe mode has the same problem - vista starts up then completely hangs on the login screen.

has anyone encountered this problem before in vista? know any solutions?

thanks

 

[CKent]

Google it with the make and model. I find prebuilts (Dells, HPs, etc. - and, by definition, laptops) have proprietary parts with specific problems. I just fixed a friend's Dell which had a stop error caused by faulty drivers for the proprietary SATA controller. Turns out this is a common problem with Dells build in 2005-2006 using this proprietary Intel controller. Updating the drivers would have worked, if it would boot up - but it wouldn't, not even in safe mode, not even with every unnecessary peripheral unplugged. In fact I couldn't even reinstall windows with all the peripherals attached, I had to disconnect one of the optical drives, one of the two sticks of ram, the sound card and the modem before it would let me get that far.

 

[Exterous]

Any external devices plugged in? I had a computer that would not start up with a specific printer plugged in (Worked fine with the other printer though)

 

[Jeff7]

Happened to me last semester. Finals were the next week, and my PC wouldn't boot. Checked the guts, and it turned out to be a bulging cap. A regular cap wouldn't do the trick, and no local vendors carried low-ESR caps. All my assignments were on the hard drives, which are in RAID 5, on a Promise SX4000 controller. I couldn't boot it on someone else's system, because the only one I had was on a really different motherboard (Socket A vs a P4 board), so WinXP bluescreened on bootup.

Just lovely. Fortunately, I had a laptop, and I at least had older copies of some of the notes I needed.
I wound up doing a system upgrade. Now I've got aluminum capacitors, hopefully I won't see any more of that bulging cap issue.

(Interestingly, where I work, we use video dubbing equipment. A digital video -> DVD recorder was acting up. Power supply had a bulging cap. Damn things are like weak mines.)