Windows XP won't boot...help, please?
Currently using benQ Joybook 8100 with windows XP home edition. All of a sudden when chatting on messenger, the laptop just turned itself off and then when I tried to restart it, it just says "invalid or damaged bootable partition". What should I do? I have windows XP with me but I haven't backed up my data inside my C drive. I have 2 partitions, C and D drive. Currently using benQ Joybook 8100 with windows XP home edition. All of a sudden when chatting on messenger, the laptop says that it ran out of memory (or something similar...I can't really recall) and then just turned itself off. When I tried to restart it, it just says "invalid or damaged bootable partition". What should I do? I have windows XP disc with me but I haven't backed up my data inside my C drive. I have 2 partitions, C and D drive.
Laptops & Notebooks - 5 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
can you get into the safemode? You can just get the hard disk out, install the hard disk to another computer and copy the files.
2 :
Basically it's saying XP is damaged because the HDD has been thrashed around a lot this is common in laptops. So more than likely your HDD is destroyed, so try and open hte BIOS settings by tapping delete as you start up then navigate in there to make the cd drive the first bootable device and put that XP cd in and do a reinstall. However if you want your data I understand some computer stores offer a recovery service where they can salvage the contents of your HDD, so do this first if you have things you really need in there. Otherwise you may have to get a new HDD which is about 60 dollars for a 120 gig I guess.
3 :
use the restore cd if you have any
4 :
IT Tutorials- http://good-tutorial.org/
5 :
If your XP disc is an actual Windows disk and not a restore disc, and if your hard drive isn't thrashed, you can do a repair/install of Windows XP without losing data. You will have to reupgrade Internet Explorer if your using 7.0 and you will lose all emails if you use outlook express but other than that all files and programs will remain intact. But before you attempt this, be aware that this is easy on systems that were home built as the builder has the chipset and graphics card drivers on CD and is able to reinstall these drivers after reloading XP. If you dont have these discs available and/or you can't get the specific drivers from the BenQ website, DO NOT ATTEMPT THE FOLLOWING! 1. make sure your computer is set to CD/DVD as the first boot device. do this in BIOS if it's not already set up. 2. start your computer with the XP disc in the drive. 3. let windows start to load until you get to the screen that gives you the choice of entering the Repair Console or Set up Windows XP. Do not go to the repair console. This is not the no-reformat reinstall you want. Click as though you are loading a new version. 4. After hitting f8 to accept windows user agreement Windows will say it's searching for previous installed versions of Windows. Your original Windows installation will be highlighted in the box. if it's not, highlight it and select R for repair. If no previous XP version is found, quit setup. 5. After this stage of installation Windows will reboot. Again, don't do this if you don't have the driver CD's available or the Drivers from the manufacturers website. Also, if your previous Windows install is not on the hard drives after windows has searched for previous versions of XP, bail out. hit escape or turn off the computer before Windows setup finishes. Windows will be reloaded and all your files and programs will be there. Just remember to avoid the Repair console at the first fork in the road. This is where most nonreformatting repair installs go wrong.
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