First off, many thanks for everybody responding.
This problem originated the day before yesterday when I switched it on first thing.
I was confronted with a ‘windows error recovery’ screen that advised me I had maybe had a hardware or software change had caused the problem.
It also went on to advise me ‘windows files had been damaged or configured incorrectly and start up repair can help diagnose and fix the problem. If power had interrupted during the start up, choose ‘start windows normally’.
It then gives me the two options of
‘launch start up repair’ or ‘start windows normally’.
If I elect to start windows normally, I just end up back at this window and so even I worked out I might have to choose ‘launch start repair’ ….
Ok so far … after I allow it to run, I eventually get a window telling me ‘start up repair cannot repair this computer automatically’.
It then gives me the option of sending info about this problem or not (lord knows how it sends anything if I can’t get the fackin thing to load but anyway…)
But…I do get a window displayed that tells me if I have recently attached a device to this computer, to remove it and if I continue to see this message to get in touch with the administrator bla ... blah ....blah !
There is in blue writing underneath this text giving me the opportunity to ‘view diagnostics and repair details’ or ‘view advanced options for system recovery and support’.
I obviously tried all of these, the first of which basically tells me the start up test repair couldn’t determine the problem along with a load of other crap that might as well be written by an Orc.
The second option however is quite interesting in that it looks as though I could actually get somewhere with it only to conclude it’s a bunch of horse-sh!te masquerading as a sliver of a chance to repair.
When I select ‘view advanced options for system recovery and support’ the first window I am confronted with is to surprisingly select a keyboard layout, I ignore the default Yank layout and go straight to their mother tongue and select English as spoken by UK people.
I am ten asked to input user name and password where it offers up the default selection of administrator, the only way I can get it to go any further name is by selecting my user name and the appropriate password, no problem so far.
OK, the window I get then has the following options :-
Start Up repair
System restore
Windows Complete restore
Windows memory diagnostic tool
Command prompt
Deep intake of breath …here we go ….
The 'Start up repair' option is what we did earlier and just loops round on itself as I said before.
'System restore' doesn’t work on any point selected… I had about 8 options and when I select any of them, it goes thru the motions of restoring to that point and tells me everything went well only for me to restart the laptop and then default to my old friend, the ‘windows error recovery’ screen that started this whole thing off ……
'Windows Complete Restore' is somewhat confusing in that it fails to recognise the back up drive I shoved in a usb socket.
The back up drive had a back up file with which to restore the laptop but I’m afraid this option couldn’t even see the drive let alone the back up file.
'Windows memory Diagnostic' tool goes merrily on its way checking my memory only to tell me everything is ok ….. but it obvously ain't when I start back up cos it just opens up with that original fault screen.
'Command Prompt' does bring up the command prompt window only for this to reveal how completely useless I am form hereon in, I can certainly access different directories on my c drive but I got no real idea what to do after that.
OK, at this point, I pretty much resigned myself to the idea I wasn’t gonna get this drive to work on my laptop but I did shove it into an enclosure and accessed it on another laptop and I can see all my files; now I realise this doesn’t tell me if windows was corrupt or not on the drive and so I went out and bought a new drive and shoved it into the offending laptop.
Now, just to recap here, I am putting a blank drive back into my original laptop and then intending to load up windows again with the recovery disks 1 and 2.
My intention was to create a working drive and then to hook up the drive that was looking faulty and then to offload all the files I needed to … my plan was good but… well, there’s always seemingly a ‘but’.
When I fired the laptop up, nothing, it wouldn’t boot from the disc.
I tried to change the boot up options in bios but all to no avail, it wouldn’t allow me to, and then I saw an ‘f12 boot’ option that allowed me to directly boot from the optical drive and I eventually loaded up my recovery disks onto my laptop only to switch back on and then…..fack all … it did nothing but sit there and flash a hyphen at me in the top left hand corner.
At this point, I thought jeff abbott had come round and stole my operating system.
And this is where I sit…..and sit …and sit ….
