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General discussion

Unable to Start/Restart

Dec 12, 2003 7:47PM PST

I don't turn of my computer usually, but couple of crashed recently made me to. System goes down, but fails to restart. Normally keyboard doesn't light up and all activity is restricted to CD drives blinking and one of them whirring intermittently. Tried to disconnect the cdroms - didn't help. Eventually - after maybe 5 restarts (PC reacts to prolonged OFF-buttoning) or 5-7 minutes waiting it all goes up: cdroms stop blinking and the XP loading screen appears. Couple time I shaken some wires and ribonns internally, but I don't think it was this which made the difference. So, I am at loss. I haven't put any new software and don't even know where to revert with system recovery. Thank you.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Unable to Start/Restart
Dec 12, 2003 9:34PM PST

Reseat all cables and devices.
Try with one RAM chip at a time amd reboot.
Do you get to a DOS screen or see the POST? Can you get into the BIOS setup?

If so set it to boot from CD ROM and boot with the XP CD and get into the Recovery Console and type: FIXBOOT

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;314058&

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Re:Unable to Start/Restart. Hint: It's not an OS or XP problem.
Dec 12, 2003 9:48PM PST

If a PC just whirs and blinks for 5 or 7 minutes as I read in your post, you can have real hardware issues such as a CPU COOLING issue or the epidemic issue or BAD MOTHERBOARD CAPACITORS. Hint: put those all capital phrases (2 so far) into http://www.google.com

In short, XP would have little to do with bad hardware.

Bob