Windows XP won't fire up

My 6-year old computer monitor smelled funny and won't fire up. No big deal as a new one is $99 at Office Max.

Now I can't get past the "safe-mode" on firing up Windows XP. I have tried all 5 options including "last known" and get three beeps and it goes back to the 5 "safe-mode" choices.

Anything I can check before releasing it to the geeks and losing everthing on the hard drive?

Ideas?

That sounds bad..

I'm going to guess the computer has an onboard video card that back fed some voltage to the motherboard and hosed something.

I don't know how to go about troubleshooting or fixing it, but a while ago when a computer fried on me, I was able to take out the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure. Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NST-300S2-BK-3-5-Inch-External-Enclosure/dp/B0015LURY2/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1292379506&sr=1-4

So when I got a new computer, I could get all the data off the old hard drive and use it on my new computer.

Clean the gook out of the mouse. Dirty mouse balls cause a lot of trouble.

A driver is crashing when it's booting. If you get into safe mode then the hardware should be ok.

You could try to reload XP. That would take care of your driver issue. You can install XP on the same hard drive as the old install is on without issue. You'll just have two C:/WINDOWS folders. This should allow you to get your data off the hard drive. Once that's done, wipe the thing and start over with a fresh clean install.

Don't listen to the Mac zealots. They're coming because, like vultures, they love to pick at a fresh corpse.

you try priming the carb again?

Since you're posting, I am assuming you have access to another "known-good" computer. Here's what I would recommend. Download a copy of Ubuntu from www.ubuntu.com, stick the CD in your CD drive and see if you can get it to boot from CD. If you can, we know all the hardware's alright. Plug up external media of your choice and back up your data. Then reinstall windows.

Alternatively, if you do have a hardware failure, follow Big ego's instructions.

Is there enough wood in the firebox?

Sounds like the video card went a little wonky and fried the monitor. Or the monitor went wonky and fried the video card. (Although it could be any number of things, eg the PSU or motherboard.)

I'd probably pull the hard drive, get a new compy (I have to admit, I recommend Macs and/or Linux), either install the old HDD via mounting internally or put on a USB IDE/SATA adaptor/enclosure, and copy what you need over to the new compy.

+1 on the Ubuntu idea. You should just ditch windows anyway and permanently install linux anyway

Assuming you can't/won't do that, my suggestion is fire it up in safe mode and delete whatever display drivers are present in the "Hardware Manager". Then reboot the system. It should autodetect the new monitor, and be all nice and happy after that, assuming there are no other issues.

Funny smells are almost never a good thing.

Also, what make/model number is the PC? We should be able to figure out what the motherboard is trying to tell us with the three beeps.

I never recovered from that particular problem sorry to say. Whenever that happened, it was new PC time. (until I went to a Mac, sorry but its true)

Have you checked the flux capacitor?

pinchvalve wrote: I never recovered from that particular problem sorry to say. Whenever that happened, it was new PC time. (until I went to a Mac, sorry but its true)

A lot of hardware failures comes from the cheapest brands (Compaq, Emachines...) because they use(d) the lowest bidders for components. The lowest bidders stuff is quite often junk. Why do you think Macs always cost twice as much or more than the cheapest comparable PC at Best-Wal-Buy-Mart. As in all things, you get what you pay for, works for cheap PCs and more expansive Macs. To that end, I'm still enjoying my 6 year HP. Googling "mac hardware failure" returns 361,000 hits; conversely googling "pc hardware failure" returns 455,000. What does this tell us? I dunno...

RossD wrote: A lot of hardware failures comes from the cheapest brands (Compaq, Emachines...) because they use(d) the lowest bidders for components. The lowest bidders stuff is quite often junk. Why do you think Macs always cost twice as much or more than the cheapest comparable PC at Best-Wal-Buy-Mart. As in all things, you get what you pay for, works for cheap PCs and more expansive Macs. To that end, I'm still enjoying my 6 year HP. Googling "mac hardware failure" returns 361,000 hits; conversely googling "pc hardware failure" returns 455,000. What does this tell us? I dunno...

I love this Ford vs Chevy style argument.

It all gets boobies, or weiners depending on preference, on the monitor. That's the important part.

RossD wrote: Googling "mac hardware failure" returns 361,000 hits; conversely googling "pc hardware failure" returns 455,000. What does this tell us? I dunno...

That there's more PCs?

Osterkraut wrote:

RossD wrote: Googling "mac hardware failure" returns 361,000 hits; conversely googling "pc hardware failure" returns 455,000. What does this tell us? I dunno...

That there's more PCs?

There's actually quadzillions more PC's than mac's (that's a fact--look it up!). If we simply take those numbers and equate each hit to a hardware failure and divide that number by the total number of computers (mac or pc) we will end up with some sort of failure ratio which would not favor the macs.

Therefore, since we all know that macs are better than pc's, that logic is clearly bogus.

Macs win.

QED

Disclaimer: I have never owned a mac. Posted from a home-assembled system running ubuntu linux.

Yeah but if my HP had a hardware failure, I wouldn't look up 'pc hardware failer'. I probably wouldnt look up 'hp hardware failure' either, it just was an example. See what I mean...

You've got monkeys humpin' as your avatar. Therefore you are a witch!

My logic is irrefutable.

BURN HIM!