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boot sector possibly messed up?
Posted on 6/16/14 at 1:11 pm
Posted on 6/16/14 at 1:11 pm
Have a dell pc that is used for home theater purposes. Came home this morning and it won't boot from the hard drive.
Powers on, goes through the Dell screen, stays running for about 30 seconds then just turns the entire system off by itself. Doesn't try to reboot over and over.
I reformatted the hard drive abiut 3 months ago. Have an authentic Windows CD, never registered it, worth trying to boot from that disk and reinstall or better just to scrap the works?
Powers on, goes through the Dell screen, stays running for about 30 seconds then just turns the entire system off by itself. Doesn't try to reboot over and over.
I reformatted the hard drive abiut 3 months ago. Have an authentic Windows CD, never registered it, worth trying to boot from that disk and reinstall or better just to scrap the works?
4
Posted on 6/16/14 at 1:35 pm to fightin tigers
Press F8 after the BIOS info screen disappears and turn on boot logging. Then maybe try Safe Mode and see what the file says. If you can't even get into Safe Mode, try booting memtest86+ and check for memory errors. If it checks out, try booting some Live CD with tools, like Parted Magic or a custom-built WinRE/PE environment. Then try to access the system drive, look for boot log file you tried to create, look at SMART values, boot sector, etc. If the hardware all seems to check out, then I guess you have nothing to lose trying the Windows Recovery features, but I'd still like to know WTF went wrong in the first place. I mean, I've never run Windows Recovery, and I've been using Windows since long before that feature existed.
Posted on 6/16/14 at 1:47 pm to Spock's Eyebrow
It is strange because the computer is either running or in sleep. Very seldom do we do a reboot.
Posted on 6/16/14 at 2:02 pm to fightin tigers
If it were missing you would have a message similar to this come up.
What OS are you running? It's pretty common on XP for the boot sector to become corrupted for no apparent reason.
What OS are you running? It's pretty common on XP for the boot sector to become corrupted for no apparent reason.
Posted on 6/16/14 at 3:12 pm to fightin tigers
quote:
Powers on, goes through the Dell screen, stays running for about 30 seconds then just turns the entire system off by itself.
What's the last thing you see on the screen before it powers off?
Posted on 6/16/14 at 4:46 pm to fightin tigers
When the Dell logo comes up, hit the F12 button until you hear the computer beep at you. This will take you to the boot menu. Run the Dell diagnostics and see where it bombs out.
Just from the description, it sounds like some sort of heat issue (CPU fan not turning on, thermal gel breaking down, etc).
Just from the description, it sounds like some sort of heat issue (CPU fan not turning on, thermal gel breaking down, etc).
Posted on 6/16/14 at 5:03 pm to Bard
quote:This definitely sounds like a hardware issue rather than a software/OS issue.
When the Dell logo comes up, hit the F12 button until you hear the computer beep at you. This will take you to the boot menu. Run the Dell diagnostics and see where it bombs out.
Just from the description, it sounds like some sort of heat issue (CPU fan not turning on, thermal gel breaking down, etc).
Even if the boot sector is corrupt, I don't see why that would cause the computer to shut off. It will just hang and you would manually need to power off the machine.
Do what Bard said.
Posted on 6/16/14 at 5:16 pm to Spock's Eyebrow
quote:Ultimate Boot CD is pretty good for this.
try booting some Live CD with tools, like Parted Magic
Posted on 6/16/14 at 11:30 pm to drizztiger
Thanks guys, going to try some of these things and report back.
When the computer reboots it is just a black image.
When the computer reboots it is just a black image.
Posted on 6/17/14 at 7:42 am to fightin tigers
You aren't getting the initial logo screen? Are you hearing any beeps?
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