Huge Problem

[dopey]

Long story short... I have to reformat.

I lost most of my windows data so nothing runs right, and system restore can't restore anything so my last result is to format. It started out this morning as it wouldn't boot up to login screen. It just became a black screen with a cursor and restarted after 5 minutes. Thank god i had another computer so I managed to get some info and tried everything I could to restore it. and I finally got it, only to find that I cannot use this anymore so im putting all my files into my backup drive. and reinstalling vista.

I am guessing i got something that messed up my drivers. So now I am on the computer and can log in. Just can't do anything else. Just thought I would share that, cause this was the most frustrating thing ever.

I was going to ask if there was a way that i could fix it, but this is irreversible and the only way is to restore it with the alienware recovery CD

 

[Crashman]

That's rough man. Well at least once you get everything going again it will be running like new! If you run into any problems I'd be glad to help where I can.

 

[trykael]

i know it's frustrating to have to restore - but like Crashman said, at least things will be running smoothly again soon! reformatting is good for your system...you should really back up and reformat at least once every other year just to clean out your system and allow everything to start fresh.

anyway - good luck, and holler if you need any help!

 

[dopey]

Okay I tried reformating TWICE and it still boots up to before showing the vista logo a blank screen with a moveable cursor. That is all it does before it restarts in 5 minutes. The system repair would not fix the problem and I can't even access Safe Mode for it has the same screen. I am thinking that something permanently damaged my hard drive and/or my Mobo. I am going to have to contact alienware support and hope that they can repair my computer. This is reallly frustrating.

 

[Crashman]

I don't have much time to go into detail because I need to be somewhere soon, but it sounds like the issue could really be almost any piece of hardware. The first thing I would probably try to troubleshoot is the RAM. If you have multiple sticks of RAM, try taking one out and see if it will boot.

 

[dopey]

Nevermind somehow i just shut it off for half an hour then turned it back on and tried to run safe mode. and it worked. I don't know how, but it did and now I just have to reinstall everything on my computer =/

 

[trykael]

before you reinstall a bunch of stuff, i would take the time to run a few tests and make sure you don't have a bad piece of hardware in your rig. random fixes of lockups like that could mean you've got bad RAM or a bad section on your hard drive, and you'll be really frustrated if you get everything reinstalled just to have it all happen again. so, take a little time and run MEMCheck and and hard drive test (check disk from windows if nothing else).

 

[/dev/null]

I'd second trykael's sugestion. Sounds like a dodgy stick of RAM. Do one stick at a time. Confirm heat is not an issue in your chassis as well.

 

[dopey]

I just checked the heat and everything was fine before the mess up. I found the RAM is working fine. Though at the time that it happened i was downloading an update to my Nvidia nForce NIC. Luckily i added my backup drive and created a back up of my current computer. When i started up a couple times i got a black screen error that said something about missing something required to boot. Though that message is gone and everything is working fine. I'm going to keep an eye out and update this if anything more happens or i find out why it happened cause even tho there are many topics about it, none of them solved my problem or told me what it was.

 

[Tanooki]

Here's your problem......









Your using Vista :O

 

[Frank Booth]

[quote1210792632=Tanooki]
Here's your problem......
Your using Vista :O
[/quote1210792632]

Did you install Vista SP1? Or any updates? Its Microsoft, what can i say.

[blockquote]Okay I tried reformating TWICE and it still boots up to before showing the vista logo a blank screen with a moveable cursor.[/blockquote]

It is better to erase all the partitions and create a new one and format. I would do a full format for stability.

 

[dopey]

[quote1210794838=Frank Booth]
It is better to erase all the partitions and create a new one and format. I would do a full format for stability.
[/quote1210794838]
Oh I did that by the way. Yet it still did it. I used my system repair cd and it fixed it somehow and finished installing and got things up and running. I used every scanner i can find even the Memory Diagnostic Test and error checking, and basically anything else you can think of and they found nothing that they told me about.

 

[Tanooki]

My suggestion... do a Gdisk, then use a Write Zeros program(use it 3-4 times just to be safe), and then reformat. That should clear EVERYTHING that was ever on the disk. Before you reformatted the first time, i'd say there was something wrong with explorer.exe... there's a chance it still could still be persisting.... but that's just my opinion...

 

[dopey]

I will do that next time it happens. For now im just backing up my files and waiting.