Computer won't boot.

[Enigma]

My in-laws' computer will not boot up at all. Actually, it'll go past the initial boot sequence (where it acknowledges various HDs and DVD burners) but it stops there. All I get is a black screen and a blinking cursor. No error messages and the boot sequence hasn't advanced far enough to let me use safe mode.

What can the cause(s) be?

Thanks.

[TheFeniX]

If there hasn't been any hardware changes, then the most likely culprit is either a bad HDD or just a corrupted boot sector. There's also the chance a non-bootable CD or memory disk is hanging up the boot selection process of the BIOS, but that's usually only an issue with older hardware. You can test this by going into BIOS and disabling the ability to boot off anything but the HDD with your OS.

If that doesn't work, renable the ability to boot off floppy and CD drives and make sure BIOS is recognizing your boot HDD.

You'll need a bootdisk/recovery CD to boot off. Depending on the OS, you have different steps. These disks are downloadable pretty much anywhere.
For XP/2000, get to a command prompt using a bootdisk and using the recovery console. Then do FIXBOOT and FIXMBR after the fixboot finishes.
Windows 7 has a GUI it uses to fix the boot sector, but I can't remember the steps off-hand.

What OS are you using and what recovery software do you have for the PC?

[Enigma]

If there hasn't been any hardware changes, then the most likely culprit is either a bad HDD or just a corrupted boot sector. There's also the chance a non-bootable CD or memory disk is hanging up the boot selection process of the BIOS, but that's usually only an issue with older hardware. You can test this by going into BIOS and disabling the ability to boot off anything but the HDD with your OS.

If that doesn't work, renable the ability to boot off floppy and CD drives and make sure BIOS is recognizing your boot HDD.

You'll need a bootdisk/recovery CD to boot off. Depending on the OS, you have different steps. These disks are downloadable pretty much anywhere.
For XP/2000, get to a command prompt using a bootdisk and using the recovery console. Then do FIXBOOT and FIXMBR after the fixboot finishes.
Windows 7 has a GUI it uses to fix the boot sector, but I can't remember the steps off-hand.

What OS are you using and what recovery software do you have for the PC?

XP SP3 and the only recovery that I can think of (I believe they have it I know I do) is the Windows Recovery Console.

The BIOS recognizes the HDDs and the Floppy\CD\DVD and the RAM. Can't be bad HDD as I recently checked them and the test results came out good for both hard drives.

I'll try downloading an XP bootdisk and see if I can get it fixed that way. Most likely I won't have that done until sometime late tomorrow. Thanks.

[TheFeniX]

If you have an original XP CD (not the dogshit companies like Dell used to package which only reset your PC to factory defaults), then you can boot off that as if you were installing XP. Then, when it says "Hit Enter to install XP" there should also be an option to "Hit R to load Window Recovery console." From there, you'll likely need to login with an administrator account, then run FIXMBR first, then run FIXBOOT.

[Civil War Man]

You can also try booting off a bootable CD like Hiren's to make sure that the partition with the OS files is still set as the active partition.

[Enigma]

Does it matter which XP version? I have the Professional version while my in-laws use Media Center Edition. Right now I can't find theirs but I have mine. No difference?

Oh and I can't use floppies. Keeps getting "Disk I/O Error".

[TheFeniX]

Does it matter which XP version? I have the Professional version while my in-laws use Media Center Edition. Right now I can't find theirs but I have mine. No difference?

For repair, it shouldn't matter as long as it can find the windows directory on the HDD and login. Just boot off the CD, and follow the steps I told you.

Oh and I can't use floppies. Keeps getting "Disk I/O Error".

Then either your floppies are bad, your disk drive is dirty, or it's bad as well. Boot off the CD.

[Enigma]

If you have an original XP CD (not the dogshit companies like Dell used to package which only reset your PC to factory defaults), then you can boot off that as if you were installing XP. Then, when it says "Hit Enter to install XP" there should also be an option to "Hit R to load Window Recovery console." From there, you'll likely need to login with an administrator account, then run FIXMBR first, then run FIXBOOT.

Did that and it worked. The moment the computer booted up, AVG came up with a malware warning about needing to remove "VMTTFGQWJXMMGO.EXE". Got rid of it and now scanning the whole computer.

Thanks.

[Enigma]

Still had viruses lurking about so I brought out the big guns and used ComboFix. Their computer should be ok for now.

[TheFeniX]

I've read of issues with AVG and I noticed it got a little resource heavy around 2010. I switched to Microsoft Security Essentials as my active scanner and still keep a copy of Spybot for manual scans.

[Enigma]

Even with the Combofix, there are still issues with the computer namely internet explorer. Noone uses it yet we get an iexplorer.eve error and at the same time we could hear advertisements playing. I've uninstalled IE but the error still pops up. I've removed AVG in favor of Avast for the moment. Eventually I'll be doing a nuke & pave and start fresh once my in-laws buy another computer some time today.