There comes a time in the life of a pc user where, because of their actions or someone else’s (usually someone else’s!), their computer won’t start. They may receive stop messages (the dreaded blue screen of death), the startup process may loop, or they may receive a fatal error message and a simple command prompt. Don’t get stressed. Just try a few things first to get it up and running. Here are a few suggestions.
Suggestion #1:
If you have recently installed a piece of hardware or software and now Windows doesn’t start. Try starting in safe mode. Safe mode is your friend! Start the computer from a powered down position. Now, start the computer while hitting the F8 key every second. Yep, just keep on hitting that button. In time, you should see a start up menu screen. On that screen, you should see safe mode as one of the options. The computer will do a bunch of strange things and you will end up in safe mode. This is a “light” version of the operating system that allows you to troubleshoot. Don’t know how to uninstall the hardware? Go to start>control panel (or settings, then control panel in windows 9x). Select System. Go to the hardware tab. There should be a device manager option there. Go to it. You should see a yellow exclamation point or a red “X” over the offending hardware. Click on it and remove it. Restart the machine. Hopefully that works. If you recently installed some software. Go to control panel>add or remove programs. Click on the software in the list and select the “remove” button. If that doesn’t work, look at the next two solutions.
Suggestion #2:
In Xp(and WinMe), you have another option. Do the F8 button thingy-majigger that i told you about in the last possible solution. Choose safe mode again. Once safe mode starts you should receive a message box that asks you whether or not you want to do a system restore. Select system restore and then restore your computer from an earlier time. Now, realize that once you do this, you might lose work between the restore date and the current time. But it’s better than the alternative.
Suggestion #3:
Sometimes a non-destructive installation is the only solution. What the heck does non-destructive mean? It means reinstalling the operating system over-top of the old one. Some programs might need to be re-installed after this process, but it’s a good thing to try. For Win9x, you will need a startup disk. Fortunately, this is an easy process. Find a floppy (that actually might be the hard part!) and insert it into the floppy drive slot. Go to control panel>Add or Remove Programs>Startup Disk. This should allow you to create a startup floppy. Once done, find your Win9x installation CD (the next hardest part!) and insert it into the cd drive. Restart the machine with the floppy and CD in the drives. The computer will restart and search the floppy. You will be presented with a start up menu. Select the one that includes CD support. Once done, you will have to change to the CD drive to start the install. This is a simple command. Type “d:” Where d is your cd drive. If it errors out, try “e:” Once the command prompt changes to that drive, type “setup” This will begin the graphical interface of windows startup. Once done, see if your problem has been resolved.
Xp can be even easier! Insert your XP cd. Restart the machine. Once you see the message “press any key to start from cd…” – well, press a key on the keyboard to start. And no, there isn’t an “any key” on the keyboard. This will start the graphical interface for the XP install. See if that helps.
Okay, there’s some suggestions when you are in a pinch. I hope that helps. As always, comment and share other helpful suggestions, additions, or deletions to my pointers.
