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Please- Laptop refuses to boot?!
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010 5:35 pm
Hi folks, My Emachines laptop (model M622-UK8X) has a big problem:
The other night I put it to sleep lid down (with no programs or anything open), Later the next afternoon I opened it and clicked the
mouse to wake it up, but it was all the way off (?why?), so I had to re-start it.
So I did, but it got really messy during the boot seq black screen.
The hdd is 4th in the boot seq.- Not by choice! Somehow now the BIOS won't allow changes to the boot order, access denied, it says talk to the sys admin. geez...
I don't know if that's a new thing. I have looked at the bios, but never tried changing anything. If it is new, I'm guessing that
it's not good...
Anyway, the boot order is-
1) USB, 2) USB, 3) DVD-ROM, 4) HDD, 5) Network.
When trying to boot it went past the first 2 (USBs) as it should have, since there is no bootable USB device connected, then it
looked confused, went right past the HDD (ignoring the OS installed upon it), and hung on DHCP (trying to boot from Network no
doubt), all eventually resulting in the glorious message- "No Operating System found". All still on the boot (black) screen. You can
get no further. No safe mode available to a non-existent OS, (not there as far as the computer is concerned anyway), WinXP was
working great the night before. I am stuck here, lost for now...
To say I'm very upset would be an understatement! I did nothing different from what I usually do! It went from WORKING JUST FINE to NO BOOT in 6 hours? While Sleeping/Off (yeah, again, why was it OFF, when I had put it to SLEEP?)?
Any ideas? I'm using Win XP SP3, IE7, Comodo firewall & System Cleaner, Avast A-V, Spybot S+D, Super Anti-Spyware, CCloeaner. And a secure router. No recent program installations, just ran full system spyware/virus scan with good results. Really, I think I used Yahoo mail, MyYahoo, YahooGroups, and a Virtual (online) telescope site that night.
Not much, I didn't do much but email...
Seems like it could be anything from a bad HDD (always monitored w/ SpeedFan, recently defrqaged, 15 gigs of 80 free), to a virus?! Really, this was totally out of the blue, not even a whisper of a hint that when I closed the laptop it would not wake up!
Something in the boot sector of the hd?But how to know? A direction to go? Any help MUCH appreciated & thanks
in advance!! I'm trying to check here daily, but I'm borrowin' time now,maybe there's a disc I can download online to fix the thing or get into files at least, to burn what I can? Much is backed up, but the past couple of months have been... busy. Would a Bart's boot
disc help me?
CommentsTry removing battery, a/c power and then press and hold the power button for 10-15 seconds. That should drain the power keeping it in sleep mode. If the hard drive is not being detected or the laptop is not seeing the bootsector then it could also be a bad hard drive. You can boot to a Windows XP installation CD and go into the
Recovery Mode. If a Windows installation exists it will find it.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
Thanks. I forgot that I had made a BartPE boot disc for that pc about 6 months ago! Well, I remembered lol... The BartPE program ran fine off the disc. But it could not detect the boot sector/disc or any files at all on "C" (the physical drive), and it also could not detect "D", which is the PC Angel recovery partition for "C". I'll look for a WinXP disc, but I doubt the result will be different. The BartPE disc should have seen everything, if anything was there. It appears nothing was/is there. Man, how a perfectly good running HD can take a crap and totally fail in a few hours, when not even active, is beyond me. It was running cool too. And yes, it IS supposed to go to sleep when closed, not turn off. That's why I mentioned that I guess I'll be going to Best Buy pretty soon. Ahh, decisions. That $1199.oo HP package sale for 3 pcs and a router they have now looks awefully tempting (1 desktop, 1 19" HD monitor, 1 laptop, 1 netbook, 1 wireless router), but I'm far from deciding.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
The next step is to reseat the hard drive.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
Hi again, Sorry for taking so long to respond. I tried doing just as you suggested (removing the hard drive, starting the laptop with hd removed, turn off, re-install hd, re-start) several times, unfortunately with no joy.
During the boot sequence, it goes right past the hd as before, and hangs on the boot screen, also as before.
The odd thing is, the hard drive seems to be operating as it normally does during a start-up. Meaning the hd light goes on steady at first, then later starts blinking more sporadically. Just as it would normally, and you can hear it spinning!
Any ideas what to do now? Would a corruption of the boot sector (?) cause such behaviour? I never see "hard disc drive not found" error, only "no operating system found". So I don't think so, but that's why
I'm asking. Are there any recovery tools I can use to at least get the data off the disc? A local shop says they can get data off a non-operational hd, is there something for an end-user to use to accomplish the same thing?
Last thing- I can get into the BIOS as before, but it won't allow me to make any changes (to the boot order,etc.). It wants some "supervisor" password that has never been created, and you are not presented with, nor could I find anywhere to "log in". Thanks so much for any ideas!
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
Just wondering if you see and get to the option to do a complete system restore??? My PC quit booting about a month ago as did many of my friends across the US. It seems 6 days before MS came out with Windows 7, they sent out massive updates. After we all got those updates our pcs all went out with the same symptoms. I think it's rather convenient of MS to knock out a lot of pcs right before their new operation system hit the shelves. Anyway, when I got my new pc, I had them get all my files and transfer from the old to a portable hard drive. Then I loaded them in the new pc. After that I still had my old one and decided that I would try a complete system restore since I at least got a chance to hit that option before the screen would be blank and locked up. To my surprise the pc did restore back to the original purchase date over 8 years ago. Of course 8 years of updates, SP2, programs, etc, were all lost but at least the system still works. To my big surprise all the folders that had my personal files were all still there. If I had known this I never would have paid to have them rip them from the old. Some of this might be relevant in your situation. The old pc works great and I now have it downstairs for only local functions. Some of the older programs on it are favorites and I can transfer things to work on with a flash drive. Just one reason why I simply hate MS updates! I really wonder how many HP computers were knocked out around the world?
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I use a self build program called UBCD4WIN. It will self boot to an XP system that has all the tools you need to repair or at least look at the computer C: drive and get your important stuff onto a memory pen. This link is the first page of what to do.
This is the link
uk/computeractive/ features/ 2233151/pc- first-aid- kit-4202746
Or
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I installed Win 7 RC and later Win 7 Home Premium on my computer on a clean HD and it has downloaded updates as is normal for MS products and I have not had one problem. I use Linux, ubuntu as well and as Linux updates all software on the HD from day one, it is not MS updates that cause trouble in my view.
I have never seen an 8 year restore either, are you sure???
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
You're not understanding what I was talking about. I didn't do a restore but a system roll back to the existing state of when the pc was purchased. Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough? I think what happened in this case is to because of an AMD Athlon processor. The same kind of think happened to HPs when sp3 came out for xp. I never did go to sp3 but most of the Hp AMD Athlon prcessors were knocked out. I leaning toward the same thing happening this time around. It had to be something in that large group of updates that knocked us all out and all with the same identical symptoms.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
Ah that is going back to the factory setting. I see what you meant. SP3 never seemed a hitch on my computers with Intel or AMD processors. ?
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
Remember, I could not get past the startup page (black page when booting, no hd detected at all. I shut it off running. I went to the website Ian suggested,, it crashed the browser everytime?
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
Which web site crashed ?
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I understand what you're saying. I ended up with a black page too, but on my HP I had a chance to hit a system recovery link before the system tried to boot up. I was hoping you might have had something similar. When powering up my pc, I got that screen and then in a few seconds, just a blank screen without even a mouse cursor. Good luck to you.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
That is why I carry the self booting UBCD4WIN that I sent before, it gets past your black screen and lets you look at the HDs to save your important folders and files. It also carries all the software tools to deal with your failure.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I have never experienced a black screen, but today I saw the following information about black screens that might be helpful. Fixing Windows' Black Screen of Death
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
When I say black screen, I just mean the dark boot-up screen.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
When I say black screen, I just mean the dark boot-up screen.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I have already tried a self-booting utility (BartPE) to no avail. The tool you sent (UBCD4WIN) is based BartPE. But UBCD4WIN looks so much more complete, I think I'll dl it and put it on a disc or two too! The list of utilities included is dizzying, many I have already. Things like the AVG I wouldn't use because of conflicts,
but like I said, there's alot to choose from! Thanks,
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I just use the protection programs for a swift scan or things like the hard drive programs later but then I can look at the C: drive first and get the important stuff to a memory pen. I have UBCD4WIN on both a CD and Memory Pen. The programs do not clash because they are all being run from RAM, not your hard disk.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
I understand about not conflicting now. I'll try it from a thumb drive on the laptop, but I really think the hd quit working period. But wouldn't the drive then be not-detected, instead of the OS not-detected, as the message says? (might have to read back a bit in thread). Like I said the hd light flashes as normal and you hear it humm.
By: rekha singh | 18 Jun 2010
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