triple7 Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 Hello! Since this is my first post in the forum, I will try and explain as best as I can.I have Vista Home Basic 32-bit (no service pack) and recently explorer.exe and dwm.exe crashed and so I re-booted the system however, after the BIOS shows up, all i see is a command prompt typing cursor and the OS does not boot up at all. I have already pushed F8 but all that gets me is a menu where i choose which drive to boot, even though i only have 1 hard drive. Any help here please? Keep in mind that everything was working pretty normal, this is the first time that both of these programs crashed.Will I need a vista repair disc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted August 19, 2011 Report Share Posted August 19, 2011 To me, this seems to be very bad news - a catastrophic failure of the hard drive.Wait for another opinion first, though.I'm assuming that you don't have a backup of your system so, if your drive has failed, there is a good prospect that everything on the drive is lost.Not wishing to push you away from the forum but this problem really needs "hands-on" investigation but, if you have access to another computer you could check the hard drive by taking it out and hooking it up to the working machine. This does require some experience and technical expertise which is why I suggest you let someone else have a look at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triple7 Posted August 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 19, 2011 To me, this seems to be very bad news - a catastrophic failure of the hard drive.Wait for another opinion first, though.I'm assuming that you don't have a backup of your system so, if your drive has failed, there is a good prospect that everything on the drive is lost.Not wishing to push you away from the forum but this problem really needs "hands-on" investigation but, if you have access to another computer you could check the hard drive by taking it out and hooking it up to the working machine. This does require some experience and technical expertise which is why I suggest you let someone else have a look at it.Im no super genuis but I know that it cant be a hard disk failure since my BIOS still recognises it and even when I check the info it still shows me how much space it has and how much of it is left, so it cant be that, now I have tried booting from a recovery CD but somehow the cd does not boot at all, even though i have it set to be the first drive to boot, which is wierd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted August 19, 2011 Report Share Posted August 19, 2011 even when I check the info it still shows me how much space it has and how much of it is leftHow have you ascertained this ? - by booting from a Linux Live CD e.g. Mint or Ubuntu to look at your Hard Drive ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triple7 Posted August 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2011 even when I check the info it still shows me how much space it has and how much of it is leftHow have you ascertained this ? - by booting from a Linux Live CD e.g. Mint or Ubuntu to look at your Hard Drive ?PROBLEM SOLVED!!Here is what I did:I booted from the windows recovery disc and went into command prompt and fixed the master boot manager by typing Bootrec.exe/fixmbr, after that i did a memory diagnostic and then vista booted up successfully.however, i really think after this i should backup a lot of things Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted August 21, 2011 Report Share Posted August 21, 2011 however, i really think after this i should backup a lot of thingsYes that would be sensible. I have Vista Home Basic 32-bit (no service pack)I would also install Service Packs 1 and 2 (if it was me :) )Thanks for letting us know what fixed things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triple7 Posted August 21, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2011 I long time ago I did install service packs, after that, total catastrophic failure of windows, so Im good as of now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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