My Computer is dead...

[Xshare]

Last night, the computer was acting up, stuff froze, etc. So I rebooted. Now it won't go past the Windows XP loading screen (with the progress bar on the bottom). It just sits there endlessly. I turned it off and used the safemode option, just to find out that it hangs on mup.sys, as it's the last file on the screen to be loaded. (Later I learned that it wasn't mup.sys that was to blame, but what happened after it's called). A quick search revealed this thread. I tried most of the quick fixes people had. Taking out all USB components, resetting ESCD, setting BIOS to default. None of those worked. Today I will be trying some of the more radical ones, such as taking out my video card, taking out RAM sticks, etc. However, assuming that the opinion of most in the thread was right, this is some kind of power issue that leads to a windows issue. For nobody did reformatting help, so don't suggest that. Some said that changing the PSU helped, but I really don't think there's a point to that in my 4 year old PC. (Still my main PC). But right now, nothing works, and I've got a bad feeling that this computer (my main and best one) is dead. I don't have the money to buy a new one, or even build one. I had all of my files there, important files, and my sister and dad did too. Of course if I ever get a new computer, I can take the hard drive out of this one and just plug it in as a slave and it will work right? I hope so... I can't lose my files or theirs. I stayed up till 4:30 last night fixing this, to no avail. I really, don't know what to do. I CAN'T afford a new computer, especially right now. My parents can't either so don't even ask. I am right now on my secondary PC on the network, a 333Mhz Pentium 2. I can't use this as my primary PC. Please help and offer advice.

My specs:
HP Pavilion from about 4 years ago.
Athlon 1Ghz (runs at 993)
384MB RAM (one 256MB and one 128 MB)
everything else is on the mobo, except for the crappy Geforce 2 MX 64MB PCI Graphics card.

[blue27]

Have you tried booting from the Windows disk Xshare?

[websterworld]

Originally posted by blue27:

Have you tried booting from the Windows disk Xshare?

He said he lost it, and is looking for it now.

Good luck Xshare. let us know how it went.

[TheDoctor]

I am not sure but I have a sneaking suspicion the HP Pavilion is propietary softyware, that is..they wrote there own version of xp with there own drivers, I could be wrong but some HP models definately were.

Alright as you said you have important data, the first step would be to remove the harddisk and hook it up in another computer as a secondary master and transfer the files/data you need.

Secondly if you could get hold of an old harddisk as a tempory measure and install that, at this stage leave you hard disk out of the computer. The idea is to install a clean version of your operating system on the borrowed HD and see if the computer will work.

This may see likea lot of mucking around but.

1. you will have saved your valuable data.
2. you will know definately whether or not the fault lies with the computer.

If the computer accepts the borrowed HD and the OS installs ok then the problem lies with the original HD or the software. If it doesn't work then you will know the problem is with the PC hardware.

It is extremely rare that the whole computer is faulty, if it is a hardware problem then it more than likely will only be one of the components.

Doc

[linux-tech]

This is why you always back up your install disks , no matter how "illegal" Microsoft may claim it to be.

I'm quite sure that HP uses a proprietary system, they've done so countless times in the past, and will continue to do so in the future, despite all the complaints from their users, in cases just like this.

Most likely, what happened was you installed a program that interfered with your registry settings and horked your entire install. It's pretty common, which is one of the (many) reasons I no longer use Windows, even @ home.

The only solution is a reinstall. If you've got important data, then go out, buy some cheap hard drive (10g should do the trick), take the main drive out of the system, put windows on the NEW drive, then shut the system down, put the OLD drive in as a slave and copy data over that way, then REVERSE the process to get windows back on the main drive, and you get yourself a backup drive in the process:)

Even Better? Stay away from windows! ;)

[WHW-Justin]

I have seen Power issues cause all sorts of Windows problems. Most pre-built systems are notorious for installing a power supply that will support the hardware that the machine is shipped with. Anything above and beyond this will tax the supply beyond its limits. If you have found other posts that point to a power problem, it's worth a shot.

[linux-tech]

power is a good thing to check, but in this case it's most likely either
A> a hard drive issue (not too likely)
or
B> windows registry
My money's on B, simply because too much modifies the windows registry and doesn't check to make sure that it SHOULDN'T be modifying a value the wrong way.