I Have A Computer That Will Not Boot! Help Please.

Sooner or later in the life of your computer you are going to be plagued with a computer that will not boot. The system can be fine one day and the next time you turn it on you faced with either a blue screen of death, a black screen with just a blinking curser or possibly no response at all. Trying to diagnose and remedy such an event can often be time consuming as you try all the potential fixes before needing to do a full reformat.

 

This is when I am going to again preach about the importance of backing up. If you have all your important files backed up, it will be a lot less painless if you need to completely restore your system. Remember that it is not if you are going to have to reformat it is when you will have to.

 

The first scenario we will talk about is the Blue Screen Of Death. This will require a lot of trial and error to fix and diagnose. Often times, going into safe mode will allow you to troubleshoot the offending program and resolve the issue. To enter safe mode, tap the F8 key on the top of your keyboard as soon as you hit the power button to turn on the computer. The Advanced System Options should appear. Now choose safe mode using your up and down arrow keys and then hit Enter. If you are using XP, hit Enter one more time when it prompts for the operating system. Once in safe mode, you should be able to get into Windows. The first thing you will want to try is to disable all your running programs. Go to Start and type RUN in the search box. You will see RUN appear in the column and then click on it. In the RUN box, type MSCONFIG in the box provided. Once open, go to the STARTUP tab and click on Disable All. Hit apply and close the window. You will be prompted to reboot.

 

If your system now boots normal, go back to MSCONFIG and enable the programs one by one till you find the culprit. Once your detective work is done, you will want to either remove or re-install the offending software. If you still get a blue screen, hardware may be the culprit and not software. First, remove any removable devices you have on your computer. Now do a system reboot to see if the issue is resolved. If you can now get into Windows, one of the devices was causing a problem at boot up. You still might be able to connect the device after the computer is started, you just have to remove it when you boot up the machine.

 

A far more serious scenario is when you boot the computer and you see nothing but a black screen. In this case, there might be a motherboard or other hardware failure at stake. In this case, you will either have to experiment and try replacing hardware components in order to resolve the issue. In cases such as these, it is sometimes less expensive to buy a new system then it is to get the parts replaced. It all depends on how old the damaged computer is.

 

In some instances, it is possible to simply run System Restore from Safe Mode to get your system up and running. If all the remedies fail and the hardware is still functional, a reformat is in the cards. If you have all your important files backed up to an external source, this will be a lot less painless then you think.

 

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