Start-up Problems

[dougalsdouble]

The other day my Laptop just restarted by itself but after the first Acer screen it goes to a black screen with a flashing line in the top left hand corner. When the acer screen is shown it says 'press f2 to enter setup' and 'press f12 to enter multi-boot selection screen'. I have tried both of these but i dont know what to do because i am quite a begginer.

Please can anyone help!

[Tootech]

Hi dougals,

 

Welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help,

 

Can you post the model number of your Acer, and let us know if it is an XP or Vista machine.

[dougalsdouble]

Hi. Its acer model 3630 and its xp home edition

[Tootech]

The first option is to try the F12.

 

That will take you to a menu that allows you to choose which of your computers internal devices to boot from . You should choose the Internal hard drive, sometimes written as HDD or Internal HDD.

 

I suspect there is another fault, but try the above first.

[dougalsdouble]

I pressed f12 then a list came up. +hard drive, cd-rom/dvd drive, Floppy Devices and Network Boot. I highlighted +hard drive and pressed enter then it went to the blank screen with the flashing cursor.

[Dalo Harkin]

It sounds like the OS is failing to load - this can be due to it being corrupt - or the HDD could have just died -

Do you have the Disks for the PC?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I pressed f12 then a list came up. +hard drive, cd-rom/dvd drive, Floppy Devices and Network Boot. I highlighted +hard drive and pressed enter then it went to the blank screen with the flashing cursor.

 

After you made the hard drive the first boot source did you save the setting, usually by pressing F10, before exiting the bios?

 

If you did not it will still be trying to boot from the original source.

[dougalsdouble]

Yes I do have the back-up discs i made when i got the laptop and yes i did save the settings after makeing the hard drive the first boot source.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Very well.

 

You should have numbered the disks when you made them so again go back into the bios and alter the first boot sequence now to CDROM, insert recovery disk number 1, save the settings and exit the bios.

 

The Acer should now boot from the cdrom and will ask you further down the install to insert the others.

[dougalsdouble]

ok, but will this not wipe all my data from the HD?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Well yes it will but it seems to me that you are going nowhere fast at the moment, did you never make any backup disks of your software, your personal stuff etc?

[dougalsdouble]

the most recent back-up I did was in march. but my girlfriend has important projects and stuff for uni. Is there no possible way i can retrieve the data from the HD?

[Dalo Harkin]

Unless you buy a new HDD and install the OS to that - you may get the data off the other drive at another time

[dougalsdouble]

you may get the data off the other drive at another time

 

What do you mean by this exactly?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

What Dalo means is that you temporarily remove the original hard drive, obtain a new one and install that, reinstall the operating system and and then "slave" the old drive to recover your personal stuff.

 

This can be achieved by either buying a hard drive caddy to house the drive in or by using an adaptor.

 

SATA to USB 2.0 Adapter Kit with AC Power Supply

[dougalsdouble]

so can I not "slave" the old drive to my home computer?

[RandyL]

I take it that your home PC is a desktop.

 

If you don't want to buy a caddy you can buy a Laptop 2.5" to Desktop 3.5" IDE Hard Drive Adapter Converter. This is because one uses 44 pins and the other uses 40 pins.

[Tootech]

An adapter like this one.....

 

Plexus USB to IDE 2.5"/ 3.5" Transfer adapter With Power Adaptor - Ebuyer

 

Reading back through your post I am wondering if infact your hard drive has developed a serious fault.

 

An unplanned restart and then no O/S to boot from is a sure sign of trouble.

 

Your best bet is to get a new drive, as the other guys have said and recover as much data as possible from your old one.

 

Don't expect to 100% of your data back, if it is faulty, you'll normally get what you get on the first go.

 

Copy over as much as you can straight away.

 

Let us know how you go on.

[Plastic Nev]

Once you have got as far as trying to extract the data from the old hard drive, a tip if there is trouble in doing so, is to put the old drive in the freezer for a couple of minutes to really chill it down, sometimes a drive will work cold when it won't at room temperature.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

More here on this.

 

Freeze your hard drive to recover data: Myth or reality? - [Geeks are Sexy] technology news