Shoutbox

Well...

I have a computer that i use for dj'ing in my pub. I turned it on today to update the songs on it etc and it wouldnt boot . sometimes it gets to the screen that tells you the specs etc and but most of the time it goes to "Copywrite 1999 - 2000 Intel Corparation. All Rights Reserved." then the cursor just blinks below it.


It was working fine the other day.


Its a dell L500cx.
900Mhz celeron.
256MB ram.
80GB hdd.
Running XP Pro build 2600 or something.

Any help would be appreciated as i need it to work on Firiday.

My guess would be something internal has died and the BIOS POST is crashing because of it. Try getting into the BIOS (via F2 or Delete as the system starts up) and see if that works. If it doesn't, well, I'm assuming you've got some tech skills for the next bit:

Remove all unneccessary internal components (Hard Disk, CD-ROM drives, etc, as well as any PCI cards you may have), and then boot the PC.
If it works then replace them one by one, booting in between to see if the system still boots. Once you find the hardware that stops it booting then you'll need to replace that bit.
If it doesn't work then the motherboard is likely foobar-d.

If you don't have the tech skills, you'll want to get someone who does to take a look at it if you got this far. (And I warn you, it may be expensive if they're not your mate... maybe even if they are ! )

Just tried all that.

The first time i booted without drives etc it made a continuous beeping noise. It still didnt work without having any drives or pci cards connected.

ive added the modem back in that was in there a few weeks before that i took out and it still made no differnce.

swapped ram over, hard drives over and everything.

nothing

looks like your mainboard is fuxxed then

quote:

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Originally posted by Jesus
looks like your mainboard is fuxxed then

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Yeah. i have a spare mother board but i need to reinstall XP on it, which will erase all the data. and i cant be doing that as there is over 50GB of music on there =/


EDIT: wtf @ dodgy quote.

if you have enough space on the pc you're currently working on that shouldn't be a problem, at least if the HDD is not broken too

To reinstall XP without losing the music (admittedly, you'll lose all the settings and the music database - which isn't a problem if you tagged the files properly) simply get the recovery console up (Windows Setup from the CD, press 'R', enter admin pass) and:

code:

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cd C:\
attrib -s -h -r ntldr
del ntldr
del WINDOWS /F /S
del "Program Files" /F /S

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This should allow you to reinstall Windows while keeping the documents and settings folder (I'm assuming this is where the music is, if it's not, simply mkdir C:\Music and move all the music into there).

Thanks, ill tr that. i have most of the music backed upany way but it would save time.

also, is this with the new motherboard?

I think that it wouldn have to be done with the new motherboard, unless you can get Windows Setup to boot with this motherboard.

If you do try whatandrewdodd13 suggested, once you have installed Windows XP, do not create a user with the same name as the one on the old installation that had the music, else whan you log on, the stuff from the profile of the old installation will be erased, and you will get the usual brand new Desktop/Start Menu/Documents. If the new user you create on the new installation has a different name, you get all the new profile, but you the files of the old user's profile are still in "Documents and Settings", and you can rescue the music from there. You can even copy the the old profile into the new user, but after the new user has logged on once, else at the first logon, a new profile is created and whatever was in the folder is erased.

Yes sorry, that was with the new motherboard on. Or on another PC if you so wished.

My experience of creating a new user like that would be that the old folder would be renamed to Andrew.000, but I have a slipstreamed & customized install CD, so it may not work for all installation discs.

Of course, if you just renamed the D&S folder in it's entirity you could copy anything else from there that was on it.