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Windows won’t start
A definitive list of all the things known to make Windows wake up dead could fill a book, but this emergency
guide should effect a cure or help pinpoint the problem.
If start-up fails to reach the splash screen, and perhaps there are complaints about the hard disk, see if you can reboot from your emergency bootup floppy. If you can’t, suspect a hardware or a CMOS problem. The CMOS is where the BIOS remembers settings such as the configuration of disk drives. A series
of beeps soon after switch-on is a sure sign of hardware failure, but not necessarily a disk or controller problem.
Check cable connections inside the case, and see that chips and expansion cards are properly seated. If possible, check the BIOS set-up screen to make sure the disk settings are in order. There is usually an auto-detect feature for hard disk parameters. Contact us for help if you don’t feel confident.
If the PC boots from floppy, try to log on to drive C by typing ‘C:’ without quotes and pressing [Enter]
afterwards. If you are using Windows NT, XP or 2000 formatted to NTFS file system, you won't be able to access the drive this way. For all others, failure here indicates a faulty disk or controller, or
damage to crucial data on the disk responsible for recording the partition structure and loading the operating system.
Try typing ‘FDISK /MBR’, again without quotes and followed by [Enter]. An error message strongly indicates
a hardware/CMOS fault. Otherwise, try booting from the hard disk again. If the machine still refuses, start from the floppy and try ‘C:’. If it works now, type ‘A:\SYS C:’ and try to reboot once more.
If you only reach the "C:\>", you will need to copy the hidden system file "MSDOS.SYS" from another working system into C to get it in GUI mode.
Still won’t load? If you can get on to the C: drive after booting from floppy, type ‘DIR’ and [Enter]. Missing files and scrambled names indicate the disk’s contents are badly corrupted. ScanDisk may not be up to such a major repair job and could makes matters worse.
If the only copy of important data is trapped on the drive, try a data recovery specialist or you can contact us. Whether or not you recover data with the aid of special software or a service, if the disk’s contents are seriously corrupted you must now format the disk and install everything from scratch.
If Windows begins to load normally, but dies or restarts before or around the time the graphical user interface is presented, a Windows or driver file may be corrupt, or the hardware it drives is faulty or there is some hardware conflict.
Try to reboot in Safe Mode by jabbing [F5] straight after the power-on self test (POST), as Windows is about to load. If Safe Mode works, the core of Windows is okay. Go into Device Manager – press the Windows logo key and [Break] together, then click on the Device Manager tab.
Open the branches and search for indications of trouble, particularly a yellow blob containing an exclamation mark. If an item is shown as having a problem, try disabling it and restarting in normal mode. You may find Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q125174 useful – it explains Device Manager error codes. Instructions on retrieving Knowledge Base articles mentioned in this feature are in the box Microsoft’s
hidden Windows help.If you can’t see anything, or that doesn’t work, boot again and this time tap [F8] or hang on to [Ctrl]. A menu will be presented, from where you can choose a logged start.
After Windows has failed to load, return to the boot menu. Select Command Prompt Only and, when the prompt appears, type: ‘EDIT \BOOTLOG.TXT’. You will see a progress report on the failed start. It is normal for some entries to be marked as failures.
Go to the bottom and see which files were loaded last. Even if success is indicated, these may be the trouble and you should try to identify what they do. Knock them out somehow – by temporarily renaming them, or by disabling the hardware in question. [Alt][F] then [X] quits from Edit.
A further thing you can do is to start in Safe Mode and run Asd.exe – the Automatic Skip Driver agent. This is supposed to identify drivers which prevented Windows from loading. If Windows seems to load most of the way, and fails just before handing over control, suspect a program loaded automatically on start-up. Try holding down [Shift] during boot-up – this prevents these programs loading. If that does the trick, investigate further using the System Configuration Utility (Msconfig.exe) which enables you to disable files individually.
The next thing to try is rebooting to the command line, and typing ‘SCANREG /FIX’. This checks for and possibly fixes registry problems. You can also try ‘SCANREG /RESTORE’ to revert to an earlier version of the registry, in case the current one is faulty.
As a last resort before reinstalling Windows, see if you can get
on-line and read Knowledge Base article Q188867, a guide to troubleshooting start-up problems.
Power
On Self Test beeps
1 short beep - POST OK
1 long beep 3 short beeps - display card problem, check if inserted
firmly, esp AGP card
Continuous long beeps - RAM problem, check RAM
Continuous short beeps - CPU overheating warning on some
motherboards
There are certain range of motherboards that beeps for no rhyme or reasons, outside the scope listed above. For those, you out of luck, and you may need to guess the actual meaning of the beeping.
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