The girlfriends computer appears to have died – it’s a dell inspiron 1545, with Windows 7, and appears to be stuck in a death-loop of recovery.

It keeps coming up with the option to start normally or repair, and seems to be stuck in a spiral – neither option works and keeps going back to the same screen with the same 2 options.

Tried the F8 option, and booting in safe mode and wouldn’t do anything, just drops to the same 2 options.

Anyone got any idea how to solve this? I’m taking the flak for not being able to at the moment….

Oh, and should have bought a mac isn’t an option.

use another pc to burn a boot disk/usb stick so you can get the thign started. It may be that once you manage to shut it down normally it’ll sort itself out.

do you have a backup so you could reinstall windows and restore?

we had a laptop doign this and the hard disk was fecked was the upshot.

can you shove a windows cd in and boot from that ?

neither option works and keeps going back to the same screen with the same 2 options.

Step by step, what happens after you select an option (say, repair). “It doesn’t work” tells us nothing.

Also, is there any data on there that you need?

With the option to repair, it defaults to the 2 option “repair windows” or “start windows normally” with its 30 second countdown. Either option leads to it restarting and then going to the same screen.

Pressing F8 during the start up takes me to a black and white screen (i.e. outside of formal operating system) where it gives options to repair, start in safe mode, safe mode with networking, safemode with command prompt and some others below that. Trying each of them restarts the machine and goes back to the original 2 option + countdown thing.

We have a windows 7 disc that came with the machine, but I’m unsure how to boot from this.

Equally, we have my laptop which still works, but not sure if I created a recovery disc whether that is tied to my machine somehow, as don’t want to completely kill her laptop.

With the data that’s on it, I’m not sure entirely as it’s not mine, but I think most of her photos and stuff are, and they’re not backed up. I also have no idea how to get those off the computer if I can’t get into windows as I’m a bit thick like that. She would definitely like to keep those if possible though, so presumably a backup of ‘mydocuments’ if that’s possible? I have an external (usb) hard drive, but not sure if that will work.

and they’re not backed up

DO you know anyone who’s decent with computers ?

I’d be btempted to get them to remove the disc and copy off the data onto another machine before trying to fix her windows as I guess that might end up buggering the disc if it’s already failing or you might wipe stuff without realising what you’re doing

I’ve had to reformat my computer from scratch several times, and had to use the System Recovery function. I don’t know whether you’ve got that on your lap-top. But you would need to be able to navigate to it from your main menu. I’m on Windows XP, so I don’t know whether it’s different for Windows 7.

You should have made a system restore disk once you got the laptop, because that disc should override anything else and you should be able to just reformat the hard drive completely or go back to a restore point. You might want to ring up where she bought it from and ask for a system restore disk. Try getting one for free or letting them repair it. You may need to get outside help to get it to restart. But I think anything on there is lost. Sounds like some kind of virus or something is making her system go haywire. Had it happen to me loads of times, but a system restore disk has helped out every time.

*don’t do a system restore or recovery*

You *will* lose all the data.

If there’s data on there that is a) important to you and b) nowhere else then it’s time to get someone involved who won;t make things worse.

1. Buy an Ubuntu magazine that comes with a disk.
2. Stick the disk into the damaged PC and load a disk based Ubuntu session.
3. Copy everything importnat from the damaged PC onto a memory stick.
4. Attempt to recover Windows, or just reinstall it.

Basically, save the data first!

*don’t do a system restore or recovery*

You *will* lose all the data.

That’s interesting, Iv’e done a recovery on a 7 machine and it left all data quite happy.

Either option leads to it restarting and then going to the same screen.

Immediately? After a few minutes? Black screen? Blue W7 wallpaper screen? Windows ‘loading’ screen?

What happens if you press a key to stop the countdown, then leave it for ten minutes? Does it wait, or restart?

That’s interesting, Iv’e done a recovery on a 7 machine and it left all data quite happy.

Apples and oranges.

That said. Do not attempt any sort of ‘recovery’ or ‘reload’ or ‘restore’ unless you understand what you’re doing.

You’ve got two good suggestions here so far:

DO you know anyone who’s decent with computers ?

and the suggestion to use a Linux boot disc to get the data off. However, you don’t need to buy anything to do that so long as you’ve got a USB stick. We can go through that in a minute, but I need the earlier questions answering first. Also:

Do you have a spare computer to download stuff?

Do you have a Windows CD?

Are you still selling your camera?

If either of the two options is chosen, the computer looks like it is rebooting, and then after about 30s, the two option screen comes up again. While the rebooting screen in loading (black screen, dell logo and blue progress bar under the logo) I get an option to press either f2 or f12, but haven’t as yet as don’t want to kill it inadvertantly.

If I press a key and leave the countdown to finish, I’m fairly sure the countdown goes and the same screen just sits thre until you choose one of the two options, at which point the same process as above occurs.

I’ve got a usb stick, my laptop works fine so can download stuff. Looks like we have the original Windows operating cd.

Sold the camera the day I asked about the price though…

Don’t know anyone that’s good with computers short of one of these pc repair centres. (wouldnt go to pc world though!)
Also, ubunto sounds like a world music band, even though i guess its Linux related.

Excellent, thanks.

If I press a key and leave the countdown to finish, I’m fairly sure the countdown goes and the same screen just sits thre until you choose one of the two options, at which point the same process as above occurs.

Would you humour me and just check for certain please?

If it sits and waits indefinitely:

Boot off the Windows CD, it should detect the existing installation and give you a ‘repair windows’ screen. I can’t remember the exact wording, but there’s an option to repair startup problems. Choose this.

If it spontaneously reboots:

Don’t do that. We need a different approach in that case.

Where are you geographically?

Sadly I’m at work at the moment, so can’t check for sure, but am fairly confident that if the coundown was gone it idled rather than rebooting.

Thanks for the help to date though – will have to check later….

Just tried the any key thing and can confirm that the thing just sits there on the 2 option page. Been there about 15 mins now

Okiedoke.