Help!! PC Died.

929rob · 10-10-2007, 05:37 PM

Yesterday at work the guy I share an office with was trying to install norton internet security. It would not work because he didn't have service pack 2( not sure why his laptop wasn't up to date). Anyways, I got him going on the sp2 download and left for the day. I come in this morning and something went wrong. He said there was an error and that windows was shuting down and it never came back. Now when you start it up it comes on with a black screen that says disc error press control+alt+delete to restart. I'm no wiz bang with computers so I have no clue other than the fact that windows will not boot up. Is there a way I can get it going to do a system restore? If not how do go about reformatting/reinstalling to get it going again. It's not a big deal if he loses data that was on the hard drive.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Pasha471 · 10-10-2007, 05:48 PM

Since you say you are not a whiz bang" when it comes to computers, go to your nearest computer repair store and let them fix it!

mbodell · 10-10-2007, 08:27 PM

ok i'll help
what you need to do is boot from a windows xp cd and choose the restore option i think it is f2. then what you need to do from the command line is to type fixboot and fixmbr. you can type help when the system repair console comes up if you are having trouble with remembering the commands. fixmbr would be the first one to try and then type exit. reboot, if that doesn't work, then try the fix fixboot option. If you don't know how to do these commands then take it to a computer guy to have them do it so you don't have to wipe the poor guys computer. you can pm me tomorrow if you need help.

929rob · 10-11-2007, 10:20 PM

Thanks for the help/advice. I told him that I really didn't want to get into this and take the chance of making it worse so he opted to take to a professional.

mbodell · 10-12-2007, 08:11 AM

good idea so long as he doesn't go to best buy. A local computer networking guy would be better.