Computer Trouble

[Brink]

(Copypaste cause I'm lazy. Anyway...)

For some reason I haven’t been able to start my laptop up. It’s an Inspiron 1525. D: Every time I turn it on, it says:

‘Windows Error Recovery

Windows did not shut down successfully. If this was due to the system not responding, or if the system was shut down to protect data, you might be able to recover by choosing one of the safe mode configurations from the menu below.

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Start Windows Normally’

I’ve tried all four options and each time it shows a blank screen (although the cursor is still there)… Not sure what to do, so any advice would be much appreciated.

[Electus]

Hmm, it may be that you have a system failure going on...

Perhaps you should either:

Try reimaging (although it sounds like that you're behind all hope in that vein)
Try troubleshooting from Dell
Try asking someone who's more familiar with system errors (i.e. not me x.x)
Try a new laptop

[Duke]

Dunno if you've solved this yet, but I recently had a similar experience. Unfortunately, to solve my problem I had to reformat, meaning wipe everything and start over. It's possible that you can fix the problem without doing that though, it's hard to say, since so many things can go wrong with a computer. If you can get free technical support from Dell, I would call them up before doing anything drastic.

Also, if you can get your cursor to move around on the screen, there is probably a way to back up all your music, photos, videos, documents, everything. It takes time, but you should be able to back stuff up to another location, assuming you have something like a flash drive, external hard drive, or another computer on a network with your laptop. To do that, you'd be using DOS, the old school approach. I can help you do that before you take any steps that might risk losing all that good stuff.

If you can see your cursor, that means that windows is starting. If you can't see anything but the cursor, that means windows explorer isn't starting. If you don't know, explorer is responsible for showing things like the task bar, your desktop picture, and folders and stuff too.

One thing to try. If you can get to windows, where you see your cursor but nothing else, try hitting Ctrl+Alt+Delete. If the task manager pops up, try going to File, then New Task, then type 'explorer' without quotes and press enter. Either your desktop will magically appear, or if you're like me, you'll get an error or no response. If you get an error, Google the error message and dig around for possible solutions.

You may have already tried this, but windows has a feature called System Restore, which periodically creates a backup of some important system files, so that you can basically go back in time and restore an old configuration. I haven't used system restore in years, so you'd have to read about it online to figure out the steps involved. There IS a way to do it without being able to see your desktop, start menu, etc, but you might have to google the heck out of it to find a way.

Okay, umm, another thing to possibly try is repairing windows. Sometimes, if a critical program stops unexpectedly, it can become corrupt. What happened to me was, my windows explorer program itself got corrupted. For whatever reason, I couldn't repair it, but if you have your Windows installation disk, you can pop that in and learn about how to repair windows online.

Also, if you don't have Dell's service plan, which means no free technical support, you and I can arrange a phone call or continue posting here till you figure it out. I'm going to school for this kind of thing, so it would benefit both of us. If you want to set up a phone call, PM kahvie and ask about it. Good luck!

[.viet.]

You might have a virus or something like that is hidden on your files. If you have subscripion on your security of McAfee, it could help scan how many viurses you have or not in your files. That is all I know from when I have computer troubles sometimes.