Ok where do i start! My laptop has been playing up for about a month now when i switch it on nothing comes on the screen as if its not starting up so i have to keep switching it off then on then off etc and it takes about an hour to finally work sometimes it crashes as soon as it has started up! sometimes i get this warning on start up DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL sometimes is this message page_fault_in_nonpaged_area and some times the computer switches off and a BLUE screen appears saying something along the lines of " your computer has encountered an error and has been shut down to prevent damage to your machine" also it says something like stop 0000000x00000 something like that anyway! has anybody got any ideas??? if so please help me its driving me crazy!
well you need your windows cd. boot up the computer with the windows cd in the cd drive and it should boot you into into the windows installer (it may say press any key to boot from cd or just boot straight away) When setup has finnished loading the files it should say: press enter to setup windows XP now press r to enter a recovery console (or somethin like that the actual phrase has left me) or press F3 to quit. you press enter it will then ask you to agree to the terms blah blah just accept them it should then say searching for previous versions of microsoft windows. if it finds a windows installation then thats good as you may be able to save all your files. (if it doesnt the only way to save your files would be to put the hard drive in another computer) so if it finds a windows installation it will ask if you want to repair it. dont choose this option. instead press esc to do a fresh install. it will then ask where you want to install windows to. choose your c drive (if you hav only 1 drive then that will be the one) it will then ask if you want to format the drive or leave the file system intact. choose to leave it intact it will then ask if you want to choose another directory to install to or use the existing folder and delete the current installation. choose to use the existing folder and setup will leave all your files intact in the documents and settings folder in your old user account folder. thats the hard part over once youve done that windows pretty much installs itself with an easy to follow installation wizard what ive written above may not be exactly what everything says but its pretty accurate if my memory serves me well let me know if you have any trouble
problem is lol i dont think ive got a windows cd because when i bought my laptop it already had windows xp installed
ah... well that could be an issue then. cuz you got no chance without a windows cd. you might want to invest in a copy or chase up the person you bought the laptop off for the original cd as they shouldve given it to you really.
or the laptop didn't come with a windows cd, but one of those damned "recovery console" set of cds...in which case, you better find a way to back up all your data, either with an external hard drive, burned discs, or something else. even with the recovery cds, a windows cd is far better--it doesn't have the extra useless crap the laptop originally came with
But if you get it running again, your music files and pictures should still be there unless you are formatting your disk as well.
@ tigerlass check on the bottom of the laptop for a sticker with the windows XP licence key on it. if you have the licence key then you can actually install a downloaded version of windows onto the laptop and just use your license key to activate windows when its setup. i wouldnt normally reccomend installing otherwise illegal software but you dont have a great deal of options without the windows or recovery cds
Can someone explain the difference between the recovery CD and the Window CD?? I recently reinstalled windows but didn't use the recovery CD at all. So what exactly is it's function?
As in totally clears it of all information, viruses etc? When would I use this instead of just reinstalling windows.
