[K_2]

Hello-

My mother in law gave me her computer. I brung it home and booted it up. Booted up fine, just slow. Which she had said it was running really slow. My sister in law, who thinks she is a PC tech, has had ahold of it. There were numerous unused, unneeded programs installed, so I decided to clean it up.

I uninstalled 3 of the 4 versions of Adobe. Then uninstalled an "AVG Free Trial" that was expired. After it finished uninstalling, the computer attempted to reboot. It didn't give the usual notice saying that to complete uninstalling it needed to restart. Just shut down. When it tried to boot back up, it only goes to a screen that says "the computer shut down unexpectedly" and gives these options to restart in:
1)Safe Mode
2)Safe Mode with Prompts
3)Safe Mode with Networking
4)With Last Known Good Configuration
5)Normally

It doesn't matter which one you select, it will go on to the next screen and show the Windows XP Logo with the little progress bar and just stay there or sometimes it will go back to the first screen asking how you want to start it.

It isn't the battery, or I don't think it is. I took it out and put it back in and now when booting, it tells me that the time/date is not set. It didn't do that before I took it out and put it back in. My mother in law stated she had been having some troubles with the CD RW, it was opening, but isn't now and the light doesn't come on when trying to boot up. I have removed it and same thing happens. I put a CDROM(not CDRW like was in) that I had in and it works, and the light comes on when trying to boot computer up and can open it, but same thing happens when booting up. If you stick your hand on the hard drive when it is trying to boot up, you can feel it running.

Here is all the information I know about the computer:

Compaq
Windows XP SP2
60 GB Hard Drive
3.5" Floppy
CD-RW
DVD-ROM
256 KB

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm thinking hard drive is bad, but I don't know a lot about computers.

Thanks in advance.

K

[seahwk83]

If your don't need anything on the computer, "format the drive and reinstall xp" so you will have a fresh start - keep I mind this is an old PC, depending on what you want to do with it you should upgrade all around, starting with the memory

Did the comp. come with any restore disks?

[K_2]

if your don't need anything on the computer, "format the drive and reinstall xp" so you will have a fresh start - keep i mind this is an old PC, depending on what you want to do with it you should upgrade all around, starting wiht the memory

Did the comp. come with any restore disks?

It'd be nice to be able to recover the pictures that are on the computer, but my mother in law says she thinks she has hard copies of all of them. I don't know.

How do I format the drive? That is something I haven't ever done or learned how to do yet.

She says that she has some kind of "windows disk" somewhere. She just moved and everything is in storage. But I do know that she didn't get a restore disk when she purchased the computer. I'm assuming the "windows disk" she is referring to is the Windows XP disk. I have a Windows XP disk, but it came with my Dell. According to the Microsoft Customer Rep. I spoke to today, it would be OK to use that disk and my product key on the side of my dell and install XP onto that computer. I thought it was illegal to do that.

As for what I want to do with it... only plans were just a back up computer, something for the kids to play on. I have a newer computer. Before my sister in law got ahold of this computer, even though it is a few years old, it was a pretty decent computer. Good speed, no errors like some older ones constantly have, no freezing up, good connectivity speed, etc.

I have another computer I'd like to update. Other than changing out the hard drive to put one with more GB and adding more RAM, what else has to be changed out?

Thanks again.

[K_2]

Update:

I did some reading on Compaq's website. Followed a few suggestions. Then I'm not sure what I did, but it booted up. After the Windows Logo Screen, it went to a light blue screen where it did a "Check Disk". Was a 3 step process, and during step 2 it deleted "Index Entry Bootstat.dat in index $I30 of file 220" Whatever this means.

Anyhow, computer is up and running, still slow. Can hear it constantly accessing the hard drive.

When I open up task manager, it has a whole list of process running, even if I have no other programs open. Most of them are ".exe". Has several of the same name on a few of them. How could I find out if these should be running and/or what they are?

[seahwk83]

If you want to take the time, put what items you are not sure about in next post

[K_2]

Another update:

I looked up all the processes on a website and found that most of them were trojans with a medium risk, and a few viruses. The others were things that were part of my computer that was really up to the user to have them running or not.

It still was not recognizing my DVD-ROM or CD-RW. I am sure the CD-RW is bad. It picked up new hardware, but was not listing it as the DVD-ROM. I finally got that fixed and ran to town and got a virus protection program. Installed it.

When I started to do the scan, the computer froze. I had restarted it a few times before this and it worked fine. But after it froze and I restarted, it wouldn't boot up again.

Finally it went to a light blue screen after the "windows xp logo" screen and did a check disk. It deleted several things and restarted itself and booted up. Tried to run the virus scan again and the percentage of usage went up to 100% and the computer screen went blank and tried to restart. Only can't get it to restart.

I hit F8 and Selected the boot up mode "Directory Services Repair". The light blue screen came up again and said "This system is booting in Safe Mode-Directory Services Repair"

Then the screen went black and the following popped up-

Checking file system on D:
The volume is clean

Checking file system on C:
The volume is clean

Windows has finished checking the disk.
Please wait...

It finally restarted and did nothing.


When I enter setup using F10, it doesn't list my CD-RW or DVD-ROM. Ran a IDE Self Test and it says they recommend replacing the hard drive.

However, the last time I got it completely started up, I ran a test on the hard drive and it said it was fine.

Not sure if this is significant but it pages the whole time it is running. I am assuming it is because of the trojans and viruses. I can't get them taken care of until I get it booted up though.

I'm at a loss except for replacing the hard drive.

[seahwk83]

Do your cd roms light flash when you start the PC?
If you have the XP install disk, start machine with disk in drive and when you get to the option screen, choose the option that says "hit R to repair the system and let it go through that process if you can

[K_2]

I tried to repair with XP install disk but it is a compaq and I don't have a retail install disk, only one that came with another computer and it isn't from a compaq.

Compaq told me I could install my hard drive as a secondary on another computer and then access my files that way. So this is what I am going to do, I think.

Thanks for all your help.

[seahwk83]

If you do that, you would have to set up the compaq drive as a slave drive

[K_2]

I think I fixed it! YaY! Just be very still until I get my files off it.

After talking to the "techs" online from compaq and getting a different story from every "tech" I spoke to, I was at a loss.

Long story short... the "techs" at compaq are only "techs" at search and repeating.

I had planned to hook the hard drive up as a slave and get my files off and then reformat it and re-install the OS.

However, I couldn't get it done and was afraid the "techs" were going to end up causing me to screw something up.

So... I did some "googling" and apparently my Google works better than theirs because I found this website.

10 things you can do when Windows XP won't boot

I tried a few things and then it popped up some message during one of their steps and I got scared I was going to mess something up. That article is kind of vague.

So, I googled some more and found this one:

Smart Computing Article - Use The Recovery Console To Rebuild Windows XP

I walked through the steps and the only trouble I had was where it said to remove the attributes from the boot.ini file. Either I did something wrong or my computer won't do it the way they say. I had to remove them one at a time instead of all on one line.

As of now, it is booted up and is running a virus scan.

Now, I have a few questions. In the article it instructs you to run the bootcfg /rebuild command, well both articles do. I did it in the first article before I was afraid to continue and then did it as instructed in the second article. So, when I boot up, I have 3 OS to select from. The original one and the 2 I created. This time I booted up from the last one I created.

How can I remove the one that I created that I couldn't do anything with?

Should I remove the original one? Or try to boot up from it and if it works remove this last one I created?

Thanks.

Edit: The "techs" also told me I couldn't use a Dell OEM Windows XP disk to fix my Compaq computer, I needed a retail copy or the original one. Guess what?

Edit Again: Is there a way to put those links above in a post of their own and place at the top of the thread for others having trouble? Was really easy to follow, I think even someone without any computer knowledge could follow along, the one even has some screenshots. Just a suggestion.

[seahwk83]

Edit your boot.ini file and remove options you don't want to have at boot time