XP loading error - Help Total Novice

[thekop0071]

Hi one and All, firstly may I say what a fantastic community I have enjoyed reading the many threads posted and the knowledge on offer is fantastic I feel a huge thanks should go to the admins and the community for helpiong people and eductaing ( people like me who didnt know what a pc until may son asked me to buy him one !).

 

I hope you dont mind me posting on your site but it seems the nicest site I have come across - firstly may I explain I have hardly any knowledge of PC at all - infact when i was at school we didnt even have a PC ! anyway my problem if any one can be kind enough to help is the following ( ps I am blaming my wife and she is blaming me :D)

 

 

Hi guys - wonder if any technie guys can help me out we a problem I have with my PC.

Everytime I turn my PC on it comes up with abalck screen saying

Boot From Disk

Or

Unable to Find Operating System

Or Ctrl Alt Del - to restart.

If I leave it off long enough about a Hour or So it logs on fine with no error messages at all.

But It is very slow.

I did install a New Anti Virus and firewall a few days ago and thought it was that and removed it and system restored to baout a week ago, but it still comes up with the same error messages as above...

Any Clues guys ?

I have doen a complete Virus scan and nothing any clues many thanks Guys

 

Kind Regards

 

Haich :)

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Hello Haich

 

Welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help

 

What looks to be happening here mate is that unfortunately your hard drive is dying.

Your system cannot find an Operating System to boot from, it looks at the floppy drive and finds none, it looks at an empty cdrom drive and finds none.

It looks at your hard drive and finds a faulty operating system which won't boot.

The system is gagging to find an operating system, can't find one so says Boot from Disk, in other words boot from your XP cd.

This is pointless if your hard drive is dying.

I'd back up all your personal stuff right now.

I would also run a checkdisk.

To do so, double click My Computer, Right click C: and choose Properties.

In the Tools Tab click Error Checking Check Now.

 

Get back to us with what that states.

[thekop0071]

Hi Wolkeymole many thanks for having the time to reply to my problem - but reading some pots on hard drives- on the boards - would my hard drive really die as the PC was brand new when i brought it for my little boy a year ago..? Dont they last longer than that - and if it was the hard drive wouldnt it display the same erro regrdless how long the PC had been turned off ??

 

Would that also explain wht the PC is so slow and freezes- I use NOD32 and SuperAntiSpyware as recommended on these boards ( I have been avid reader - just 1st timer i needed help from you guys )

 

also would what you have suggested confirm that it is indeed my hard drive ?

 

Kind Regards

 

Haich :)

[Seth]

Hi.

 

The error is almost always corrupton in Window's XP files. The corruption may be caused by a software glitch, or indeed the drive is failing.

 

You need to run that chkdsk as Wolfey suggested. I would put a check on both the error checking options that appear.

[thekop0071]

Many Thanks for you help both :)

 

It takes ages when it gets to phase 2 - It moved on green bar - in 15 mins !!

 

Anyway do i select both the boxs

 

ie:automatically fix file system errors ?

 

as I have not selected this ?

 

Haich

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Tick both these boxes Haich ok