Vista Will Not Boot

The suggested solutions unfortunatley did not work, CHKDSK ran but i did not
see it complete and when i came back to check on it agian instead of showing
its progress or a finish screen it just showed a blank screen, i then ran the
"SFC / SCANNOW" solution but it gave me a messge in command prompt saying it
could not run something like " windows recovery [something] could not start
[it]".
i did try the windows vista disc to try and recover the system but i could
not get it to work (i put the disc in on boot up, tried to boot from disc it
gave me a screen asking about installation so i selected F8 for its avanced
options but it loaded 3 quarters (after a hour or two) and then failed giving
me a error code that looked like one that it had lost the cd drive connection.
A bit of background; there are other problems with the computer for example
the hard drives free space changes every now and agian with data seeming to
just dissaper into the system volume file or the windows installation section
(that is "WINDIRSTAT" can account for all data (none "unknown"). System
appears to be clean (AVG,Spybot). The system used to be xp but i upgraded it
to vista last year which has been mainly fine. Thanks for the help (if you
have any questions that would help fix the problem please ask)

"Mark L. Ferguson" wrote:

> You are experiencing some hardware failure. Most probably not too serious.
> Some driver has been corrupted. If you can indeed boot to windows, this will
> allow you, even in Safe Mode, to do quite a few things to try to fix it.
> First thing I would try is a "Command Prompt" from that Safe Mode menu
> screen. (F8 on restart, during 'black screen', after the BIOS screen) Run
> the command:
> CHKDSK /R
> then you can try the Startup Repair feature from the F8 menu.
> Now you are ready to boot to Windows and Open a Command Prompt icon from
> Start, with a rightclick, and "run as administrator" (unless still in safe
> mode, where that is redundant) Run the command:
> SFC /SCANNOW
> If none of that helps, you will have to try one of the Repair options you
> have available. (Probably called 'repair your computer') It varies by
> system.
> --
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> Mark L. Ferguson
>
> "The_power99" <The_power99.TakeThisOut@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:0C2F3C41-C0F5-435B-959C-89719030B68B@microsoft.com...
> > I currently run windows vista home basic on a HP nx6325 (dual core Amds
> > 1.5gb
> > ram) this has been running fine until recently after a spat of automatic
> > updates and a game installed (AOE3 Asian Dynasties) when my computer would
> > no
> > longer boot windows. When it was powered on it would show the HP boot
> > screen
> > and progress to a blank screen from which it would normally then after a
> > while run windows but now it just stays on this screen with a dash in the
> > top
> > left hand corner. I can run vista by doing the following: taking the
> > battery
> > out and power supply then trying again OR put the computer into safe mode
> > via
> > the screen that shows when windows doesn't boot properly (the one asking
> > if
> > you want to boot safe mode or last known good configuration etc)and
> > restarting it from safe mode . Once i use either of these methods to boot
> > the
> > computer it will work fine. Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks
>

The_power99 wrote:

> The suggested solutions unfortunatley did not work, CHKDSK ran but i did
> not see it complete and when i came back to check on it agian instead of
> showing its progress or a finish screen it just showed a blank screen, i
> then ran the "SFC / SCANNOW" solution but it gave me a messge in command
> prompt saying it could not run something like " windows recovery
> [something] could not start
> [it]".
> i did try the windows vista disc to try and recover the system but i could
> not get it to work (i put the disc in on boot up, tried to boot from disc
> it gave me a screen asking about installation so i selected F8 for its
> avanced options but it loaded 3 quarters (after a hour or two) and then
> failed giving me a error code that looked like one that it had lost the cd
> drive connection. A bit of background; there are other problems with the
> computer for example the hard drives free space changes every now and
> agian with data seeming to just dissaper into the system volume file or
> the windows installation section
> (that is "WINDIRSTAT" can account for all data (none "unknown"). System
> appears to be clean (AVG,Spybot). The system used to be xp but i upgraded
> it to vista last year which has been mainly fine. Thanks for the help (if
> you have any questions that would help fix the problem please ask)

Sounds like your hard drive has failed. Other hardware components such as
the motherboard could also be involved, but I'd start with the hard drive.
If this is a new computer, contact HP tech support for repair/replacement.
Otherwise, here are some general hardware troubleshooting steps:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Standard disclaimer: I can't see and test your computer myself, so these are
just suggestions based on many years of being a professional computer tech;
suggestions based on what you've written. You should not take my
suggestions as a definitive diagnosis. Testing hardware failures often
involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good parts. If you can't
do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable opening your computer,
take the machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local
equivalent of BigComputerStore/GeekSquad). If possible, have all your data
backed up before you take the machine into a shop.


Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!