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 To all of the Americans reading today, happy Independence Day! I hope that you have fun tonight celebrating this day with your friends and family. Eat plenty of hamburgers, hotdogs, and nachos. Or you can try one of my favorites: Pizza with nacho cheese! But whether you decide to pig out, or go conservative this 4th of July, have a good time and please celebrate responsibly!
Now on the to nitty gritty! I was working with a Windows computer the other day that would not boot up. It would restart shortly after the Windows splash screen. When this happens, you are usually getting a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) and the computer is automatically restarting itself because Windows is dumb and is set by default to restart on a BSoD. So while Windows is starting up, start pressing the F8 key during the POST (Power On Self Test) and keep pressing F8 until you get to the Windows boot options. One of the options should be to disable automatic restart during an error. Now that you have that set up, you will be able to see the BSoD and you should write down the error code. If you don't know what the error code means, put it into Google or into the Microsoft search. Okay so now I have a page that tells me some fixes, but how am I supposed to fix the problem if I can't get in to Windows?
If the problem is not hardware related, and you need to edit Windows files, this may seem like a problem because at the moment you can't access Windows. But don't be discouraged, there are plenty of other ways to access Windows. Let's cover a few: 1. Safe Mode: If you haven't tried getting in to Safe Mode yet, this should be your first tactic. When the computer restarts and begins its POST, start hitting the F8 key repeatedly. Eventually you will get to the Windows boot options. Select Safe Mode from the list. If you are able to boot into Safe Mode, then you should be able to apply the fix from there. If you are unable to boot in to Safe Mode, we can try one of my favorite options...2. Boot CD: Boot CDs are great tools for accessing the hard drive files when you can not boot up Windows. A boot CD builder will take the Windows installation files from a Windows disk, and compile an ISO image that you can burn to a CD. This CD contains a Windows environment that can run straight off of the CD. Using the boot CD, you can boot right into an environment that looks like Windows. This allows you to easily work with the files on the hard drive that you could not access before. It is great because you still get to work with the same Windows GUI that you are used to. Many boot CDs also throw in a good amount of extra troubleshooting tools. You can get the software to create boot CDs for free from Winbuilder.net or UBCD4Win.com. I prefer Winbuilder. 3. Windows Recovery Console: Another way to work with Windows when you can not boot it up is to insert a Windows installation CD and run the Recovery Console option. This will basically give you a command-line interface to work with. It is not very user friendly, but if you know the commands, you can get a lot of work done with it. That is about all I am going to say about the recovery console because I prefer not to use it unless it is something really simple. 4. Parallel Windows Installation: I am not sure if this is officially what this tactic is called, but I think it makes sense and I know a few other people who use this phrase. A parallel Windows installation means installing Windows on the same hard drive and the same partition but with a different folder name. To do this you insert the Windows installation CD and go about installing like you normally would. Select the partition that already has your first Windows installation on it. Now installation will ask you if you would like to clear the current file structure or leave it intact. Choose to leave it intact. Installation will then ask you for a folder name to install the new Windows installation. I believe the folder can be named anything that is seven characters or less and it shouldn't be the same name of the current installation, which is usually \WINDOWS. Once you get all of that done and Windows is installed, you will have a new Windows installation side-by-side with the other installation. From here you can use the new installation to edit the files in the old installation. Once everything is fixed, you can boot into the old installation and edit the new installation out of the BOOT.INI file located in C:\ and then delete the Windows folder of the new installation also. I prefer not use this method because it caused more trouble than it fixed for me in the past, but I think that is because I didn't fully understand what I was doing. If all you have to work with is a Windows installation CD, this could be a perfectly viable solution. Okay so those were just a couple of ways to get passed a non-booting Windows. These are all just workarounds to get into a Windows environment to begin troubleshooting or applying your fix. After you do this, you still need to fix the root problem. That is a whole 'nother beast so good luck with that. If you have anything you'd like to add to this list, please feel free to do so. I'd very much appreciate it. And once again for the American readers, have a fun Independence Day celebration today! If you have any questions or comments about this article, please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your opinion and I really appreciate all comments. If you'd like to be notified of new updates, please consider subscribing to the ProPCBiz RSS Feed. If you are a Twitter user, you can follow me at twitter.com/Phishie8 for the latest updates. Thanks for reading!
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