[Loch-Ruadh] OT: Computer techie question

Richard Threlkeld rjt at softwareinnovation.com
Tue Apr 15 13:57:10 PDT 2008


Sounds like corrupted files then.
Caelin

-----Original Message-----
From: loch-ruadh-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
[mailto:loch-ruadh-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Terry Sikes
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 15:50 PM
To: Shire of Loch Ruadh, Kingdom of Ansteorra, SCA, Inc.
Subject: Re: [Loch-Ruadh] OT: Computer techie question

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.  The BIOS on the computer has a hard drive
test, both a short test and a long test (that took 55 minutes) although I
don't know exactly what it does.  I did both tests (long and short) on both
hard drives and they passed.
   
  Terrence

Richard Threlkeld <rjt at softwareinnovation.com> wrote:
  Probably a bad or corrupted hard drive. The error says that one or more
files are missing or corrupted. If you have a rescue disk, you may use it.
(You *did* create a rescue disk during the initial install? Of course, it
was probably preinstalled). You can do a repair using the original install
CD or something close.

You can get an ISO image (writable as a bootable CD) from the internet for
free. Mine is called DosBoot. It comes with a minimal set of utilities and
is bootable. If you wanted to come to my place, I could give you one, but it
is probably easier for you to create your own.

If it is only corrupted, you will just need to restore the bad files or
reinstall the OS. If the hard disk is bad, you will have to buy a new hard
drive (they have come down in price a lot), install the OS. Then in either
case you may have to reinstall applications (the registry may be toast).

It *is* possible for it to be the motherboard if the disk controller is
fried, but that is not probable.

Caelin

-----Original Message-----
From: loch-ruadh-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
[mailto:loch-ruadh-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Terry Sikes
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 09:30 AM
To: Shire of Loch Ruadh, Kingdom of Ansteorra, SCA, Inc.
Subject: [Loch-Ruadh] OT: Computer techie question

Our friend Tracy has an HP Pavilion dv8000 laptop that won't boot. The Geek
Squad at Best Buy kept it for a few days, but must have had a game of AD&D
going on, because they didn't actually do anything to it except make a
backup to DVD of her hard drives. Finally one guy that had been a 3rd level
fighter that was killed by a beholder gave it back to her and told her that
he "thought it had a bad motherboard" and that it would cost about $1200 to
replace. 

I fired it up over the weekend and it will start up, gives the HP screen
and load BIOS, then gives a screen that asks if you want to do a normal
startup or start in safe mode. Safe mode will not start, only gives you a
black screen and about a page and a half of lines of file names, then stops
and doesn't do anything else. If you choose normal startup it gets to the
Windows XP screen for 15 seconds or so, then goes to a blue screen that says
"SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED."

The laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, only a DVD drive and 2 hard
drives. She began having problems when she tried to install a broadband
wireless card and the software for it. Does anyone have a bootable CD or
DVD that might get me to where I can uninstall the broadband software or get
safe mode to boot? Is there something else I can try?

Terrence
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