PLEASE help me! I'm in deep trouble!

[shifted90]

I was surfing around the internet and I saw a little pop-up sign that says one of my files is corrupt. So I just start Ad-Aware, and then another pop-up came up saying that Ad-Aware files were corrupt. Same happened to every program I started. I finished the system scan with the Ad-Aware, and I turned off my computer. Then, I turned it back on. All of a sudden, the computer went to a black screen and said:

"Reboot and select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

I press any key and the same thing came up over and over. I don't know what to do. There are so many files on the disk that I need and is very important to me.

So, PLEASE help me fix this problem, or I am in deep trouble!

By the way, I am on my brother's computer and this just happened a few minutes ago.


Sean

[shifted90]

BTW, the little pop-ups were by the clock on the bottom left of your screen.

[bailey]

is it possible that you were not supposed to be on his computer ?

this sounds too fishy to me,
first the clock is on the right side of the task bar.
and that is not the normal location for a message like you discribed,

you may have been set up with a trap.

[shifted90]

Sorry, I meant the right side. The computer I am decribing is my computer, and I have important school files and work files on the computer so that is very important to me. Please help. The pop-up that came up was on the right hand side of the task bar where the clock is, and it looked like the Automatic Windows Update pop-up, but it came out of a Yellow Triangle with a ! sign in the middle.

I really need to fix this. Thank you.


Sean

[bailey]

post your system spec's and can you boot into safe mode ?

what is the O/S ?

[shifted90]

It's an HP Pavilion a220n.

Athlon XP 2600+
512 RAM
Win XP Pro SP1

I never tried booting in Safe Mode, and don't know how to.

[bailey]

press f8 while booting
can you get into the bios ?

[shifted90]

I can get into the Setup where you configure the computer stuff. (Blue screen)

I will try to boot in Safe Mode now.

[shifted90]

Nope. I can't boot in Safe Mode.

[bailey]

make sure that there is not a flopy disk in the A drive

[shifted90]

Done that. Nothing's in any of the drives.

[nubbler]

It could also be a prank put on your computer by one of your "friends". Check which running processes you have and apps. to do this just hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and check the apps and processes tabs.

[shifted90]

The thing is that I CAN'T boot my computer. It goes to a black school.

[nubbler]

Originally Posted by shifted90 The thing is that I CAN'T boot my computer. It goes to a black school.

Do you mean black screen? How far does it go when you try to boot?, what is the last screen you seee?

[shifted90]

Sorry for the mistake. I meant screen. Okay. The last screen I see before the black screen that says:

Reboot and select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

is a blue screen that says HP INVENT on it and says F1=SETUP, F10=SYSTEM RECOVERY. As soon as the blue screen is over, it goes to the black screen.

[nubbler]

Did you check the setup to see if drive "c" is listed on the boot sequence? I can't explain how to navigate and how it looks like in the setup because it varies alot

[JayBee]

Sounds awkward to me, I've never heard of such a problem...

[shifted90]

It didn't say anything about C: Drive, but it did say the drive name. It was 3rd. It went:

1: Floppy
2: CD-ROM
3: Hard Drive

[nubbler]

1. Make sure there is nothing in the Cd-ROM

2. You might want to try putting the hard drive first in the boot sequence

3. Take the hard drive out and put it in an other computer as slve and then copy the files to that computer ans then put the drive back in your computer and do system restore and then transfer your files from the other computer again.

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by shifted90 It didn't say anything about C: Drive, but it did say the drive name. It was 3rd. It went: 1: Floppy 2: CD-ROM 3: Hard Drive

One of two things could be the problem here:

1. A loose connection inside the computer. Open the computer up and make sure all the IDE cables are properly connected and that they are all in tightly.
2. If the above step doesn't work, your hard drive could be failing. Take it out and see if it is recognized by another computer, and then copy files off.

[shifted90]

All cables are fine. I have one thing I didn't explain. I bought another hard drive and installed it. That is when it happened. So I took the hard drive out and restarted the computer and the black screen came. I tried reinstalling the hard drive, it didn't work. So I decided to reformat. I put in the Windows XP Pro CD in the computer. I pressed START to continue then a blue screen came up and said that I couldn't install Windows XP Pro for some reason. Next, I moved my NEW HDD to another computer as a slave. The same happened to that computer. Now I have 2 computers that are broken and I'm on the 3rd one. On my second computer, it said:

"Operating System could not be found"

I tried reinstalling Windows XP Pro, once again, it didn't work.

[nubbler]

There might be a virus or trojan on the drive?

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by nubbler There might be a virus or trojan on the drive?

I'm thinking the proiblem is simply that the BIOS isn't detecting the boot drive properly. It's conceivable that the jumpers on the new drive didn't get set properly and so it screwed up the BIOS settings. I very much doubt that either drive is fried.

[nubbler]

Originally Posted by thefultonhow I'm thinking the proiblem is simply that the BIOS isn't detecting the boot drive properly. It's conceivable that the jumpers on the new drive didn't get set properly and so it screwed up the BIOS settings. I very much doubt that either drive is fried.

I didn't think of that, where is my thinking today.
I don't think they are fried either.

EDIT: Yeah, so make sure your jumpers or if you're using CS, that everything is in the right place.

[Dodge7]

One quick way is run a recovery disk in the floppy or just copy DOS to a floppy and run that in the floppy dirve at start [make sure the B
IOS is set to try tht floppy first]. Once you get the "A:" prompt then change the prompt to "C:" Does it respond? If so try typing "dir" to see if the directory is in place. If so you know you can get the data off the drive at least.

Getting a white screen or white school [I know what you mean] is the BIOS screen which means your HD isn't booting - but all your data may be there, the boot section may just be destoryed.

[shifted90]

Dodge7... lol...

Well, once again, I am new at this.

Some of you really laugh at this, but how do you copy DOS? Where is it?

EDIT: Never mind that. I found out. You go to MY COMPUTER, right-click A:/ and click FORMAT. Then, you check Make MS-DOS Startup disk or something. I'm doing it now. I will tell you how it ends up.

[bailey]

you jumped the gun on this one, you should not have typed format, that was a big mistake, everything will be gone now, and you have to start all over with the recover cd that came with the computer, it will put it back the way it was when it was new, but all your files and data is gone.

[shifted90]

I did this on my other(the one I'm on right now) computer with the Floppy. I reformatted the diskette. Is that okay or is this computer reformatted or something? Everything seems fine on this computer.

BTW, A:/ is the floppy on mine.

[shifted90]

Alright. I made a MS-DOS startup disk. I put it in my "dead" computer. A screen came up that said:

A:\>

Now, how do I change the prompt to C:\ do I can see the dir?

[Dodge7]

oh no....I am hoping the XP install failed before he could do anything at all.

Shift90 Did you format the disk? If you did, what Baily says it true. Actually, a good computer shop and/or certian programs **might** be able to get most data back, depending on what type of format you did. It cost $$$ though

I hope you stopped before the format???

If you couldn't even format, the HD may be bad, or the electronics that runs it.

Let us know what