My computer locks up and won't boot. What do I do?

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I was using my computer, and i rebooted.
When i rebooted it got to the initial gigabyte screen (not the black one with all the stats) and just hangs, eventually it went from that to no power at all and the HD light flashes constantly and i can hear like a ticking noise inside, any suggestions?

LEONE....what you describe sounds like a hard disk failure.

I restarted my computer(I am using Windows XP), and now it wont boot at all. I tried booting in safe mood, and every other mood, but nothing works. Help.. please... I dont want to loose any of my work on my computer. If anyone has any ideas, please Help!! I'd appreciate it!!
This is what the screen says:
Windows hardware or software change might have caused this.
Try Last known configuration to revert most recent settings that works.
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last know good configuration
start windows normally

it will keep restarting itself to this screen... nothing else.. and I tried every mode, but nothing works, keeps going back to this screen

before I restarted my computer.... my friend had tried to sign on to msn... but I had lost my connection, so I restarted my computer.. and *BAM*.... my computer just wouldn't restart!

Here's another way when you just need to get in and copy your precious files from a PC that won't boot Windows:
Shut down, remove your bad hard drive and put in another one. Install Windows on the new drive. Shut down and install both hard drives, make the new one the Master and the old one the Slave. (If you don't know what this means, get some help). When you reboot the PC, the new drive will be C: and the old bad drive will be D: or E:, etc. You can then use Windows Explorer to copy files from the bad drive to the new C: drive. If the bad drive is really corrupt (unreadable file segments, etc), you might need a utility that can try to copy your bad files, because Explorer isn't good at this. Just google "copy bad files" and you'll find recommendations, some free.

what if my laptop can boot only in cool temperature but cant boot again after i have been using it for a while (if i restart it). If i wait until it cool down (sometime take hours!) it can reboot again!

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Hash: SHA1

Actually that's pretty easy: that kind of temperature
sensitivity is almost guaranteed to be a hardware problem of
some sort. You will need to get your laptop repaired.

Thanks,

Leo

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same problems as nikki above, besides not being able to find my xp disk what can I do?
I restarted my computer(I am using Windows XP), and now it wont boot at all. I tried booting in safe mood, and every other mood, but nothing works. Help.. please... I dont want to loose any of my work on my computer. If anyone has any ideas, please Help!! I'd appreciate it!!
This is what the screen says:
Windows hardware or software change might have caused this.
Try Last known configuration to revert most recent settings that works.
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last know good configuration
start windows normally

it will keep restarting itself to this screen... nothing else.. and I tried every mode, but nothing works, keeps going back to this screen

t

Very good article. I notice I missed hard drive diagnosis on a similar article i've been assembling.

http://www.ryanknell.com.au/docs/computer_wont_boot.html

I have had my hp laptop (windows xp) for about 2 and half years now. It has only crashed once and i had to completely reinstall windows with a cd. It has been maybe a year since that and the other day I noticed that the same blue screen came up after the windows logo. It said that it was checking for disk corruption. Now the last time this happened, after the blue screen came a black screen with some options u could choose (i do not remember exactly what they were) but with every option that you chose, it would restart the computer and would go back to the same black screen. but in this case once the blue screen disapeared, the windows log-in came up. i successfully logged into windows and ran my norton full system scan and nothing came up. I also made sure to update my norton securtity and i updated the computer with the microsoft update. I am confused because the computer seems fine. Do you think that the computer detected something and was able to fix it?

Wish I could help but I can't get any myself.
Computer kept freezing, then decided to not even boot.
I had a few instances where there was no reaction at all, no power nothing,then I got power to everything and it would not boot or show bios info
nothing on my screen as well.

I had it in for two days with some techs and they reckon they tested everything and nothing was wrong.

I figure it is a mainboard problem and for sure the bios is stuffed, but how do you fix this if nothing boots?
The dvd drive spins but will not load anything because of the bios problem.
At the moment I have it in pieces and have a new board ordered.
Setup was
Vista 64bit Business Edition
M2N32SLI Vista premium motherboard
8 gig ram (brand new) but problem was there before this purchase.
Gainsward Video Card
2 DVD DRives
WD hard drive
WD 2nd hardrive for storage
2 external 500gig WD drives
1 TB Sata Raid External
Athlon 64bit 6000+ processor
620watt Corsair power supply
Creative Audio card SFX

The new board will be a Gigabyte GA-MA 790FX-DS5

Any comments?

This system is a little over 12 months old, so as far as warranty I have no idea whether the old board is covered.

I am no genious but any help would be appreciated.

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