Cannot get windows to start, major system problem

Question

I have a big problem - I cannot get window to start on my computer. This seems similar to another post here but my situation and the error message is different.

Right now this is what happens:

When I start up the computer I get a blue screen that says:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. It goes on to say to Check for viruses on my computer and rin CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption and so on. Below this it says

technical information:

*** STOP: OXOOOOOO7B (OXF7A3E528, OXCOOOOO34, OXOOOOOOOO, OXOOOOOOOO)

I have to press the power button to force it to turn off. When turning it back on again I get the screen that starts with "We apopogize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start sucessfully...." It has several options for how I want to try to open things up again. I have tried this by selecting the option for the last settings that worked successfully as well as one for restarting in safe mode. When I do this I see the windows logo briefly and go right back to the blue screen that tells me that a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to protect my computer.

The problem seemed to occur after trying to install a program and then restarting my computer. When I did so three small boxes (windows) apeared on my desktop. One was red with nothing inside it. Another had small print with the the same thing that was continually repeated going down in a column, and the third had what looked like various information - I noticed one line had an X by DVD drive. I opened the Sonic Power DVD program and it said in the menu that a drive could not be found. I restarted the computer and the same thing happened. I went to my computer under the start menu but my DVD drive was not listed. I put in a DVD disk that I had information on (a recovery program) and the one small box that had various information in it seemed to scroll down and add more information. I tried to delete the program I installed but the computer froze up. I tried to restart my computer again and that is when I got the messages that windows could not start. I have McAffee virus scan and it did not indicate any problems before this started.

What can I do?

Inspiron 9300

Windows XP Media Center Edition

80 GB Hard drive

Message Edited by jf176 on 01-02-200709:50 AM

jmwills · Answer

Can you boot inot Safe Mode?  (F8 at startup)

jf176 · Answer

I did not pay them to do anything.  They would charge $79 to attempt to retrieve data from the hard drive and that could take up to 5 days and either $79 or $99 to reinstall the operating system.  I plan to do that myself.  My hard drive does not fit in the device they sold me so I will try to return or exchange it.  Could I try to hook my laptop directly to my old computer to retrieve data?  I only have windows 98 (not SE) on it and my laptop uses windows XP media center edition - would that be a problem?  Do youhave any other ideas to retrieve my data?  Thank you. Message Edited by jf176 on 01-02-200712:03 PM

jmwills · Answer

Extreme measures...you could have done this yourself.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp
http://www.djdenham.com/Install%20Procedures.htm#Install

Driver Installation:
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&cs=19&docid=1A0C0937D62A8739E0401E0A55174744&journalid=4F1F82483DC811DBAE564F9328EE04A4&l=en&s=gen

Just curious, what do they charge to reinstall the OS?

jf176 · Answer

No,  I could not reboot under safe mode.  I got the same blue screen as before.   I took the computer out to Cyber warehouse and described what happened to the technician.  He said 'The blue screen of death'.  He looked at it, could not boot it in the safe mode, and checked a few other things (said he could not find the DVD drive).  He said that I would have to erase the drive and try to reinstall everything.... and if  that did not work I will have to throw out the hard drive and buy another one.  He sold me a enclosure for my hard drive and said that I might be able to copy files to my old Dimension XPS computer from my hard drive using a USB cable using that.  I hope this works but it will take days to reinstall everything.

jmwills · Answer

TigerDirect sells a device that allows you to connect and laptop or IDE hard drive to another machine via USB, without an enclosure for about $25.  We ll worth the money.

jf176 · Answer

Thanks.  I was able to get into my computer's hard drive and copy my files using another device and a USB cable - that is good.  I also deleted the program and all things associated with it - but I still get the same error message when putting the hard drive back in and started the computer back up.  Now that I can access my hard drive without starting windows is there a way I can correct things without starting over or is it better to erase everything and reload my programs back (hoping that things will now work)?

jmwills · Answer

If you have pulled your data, I would start over.  You can spend hours chasing these things and sometimes its just easier to start over.

Windows General

Cannot get windows to start, major system problem

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