What to Do When the PC Won t Boot

What to Do When the PC Won’t Boot

Now let’s assume—even though I told you to limit your assumptions—that the PC will start in the electrical sense of the word but won’t perform its normal operations or let you into your Windows desktop. This section explains the ways you can spot problems and try to get your system back into working order.

Warning 

Are you having this problem with a new PC or one less than a few months old? If so, exercise your PC warranty and contact the manufacturer’s customer support line.

Common Booting Errors

Thankfully, your PCs are kind enough to sometimes tell you why they aren’t behaving properly. Decoding what they tell you so you can fix them, however, is sometimes the real challenge. The longer you work with PCs, the better chance you’ll have of spending less time trying to research or decode an error message or warning.

Booting errors—as opposed to Windows loading errors—usually report problems with a specific device or with its communication channels into the PC. This hardware may be a device you recognize such as something to do with a drive, or something you may not recognize, including less well-known devices like a drive or device controller, a chipset, or a specific memory address.

When you see a booting error, get the error message down on paper—perhaps in the journal recommended in the last chapter. Try to get the error message word for word because the exact wording can matter if you need to research the error on the Web or call the manufacturer’s support line to get assistance.

In addition, if you later do something to try to fix the problem and the error changes or disappears, note that, too. By logging in your PC journal the exact error message and what you did that caused the error, you can reference it the next time such an event happens. If the message just changes (read one way before, another now), this may tell you something about whatever step you took to correct it. It may indicate that you actually caused a new problem in resolving the first one, and you may want to go back and undo the change you made. Or it may indicate that the situation has improved, and you may just need to make an additional adjustment or two to remove the boot error altogether.

If you’re seeing a boot error, check your BIOS to be sure your BIOS Setup opens. If it doesn’t, it may be corrupted or damaged or the CMOS battery may be so low on power that it can no longer keep the settings intact. Also review your BIOS for any changes that may have been made. (This is another good reason to familiarize yourself with your BIOS Setup when things work so you have a basis for comparison.) Be sure your hard drives are detected, for example. Verify that no device that was previously enabled has been set to a disabled status. If so, this needs to be changed back and your settings saved when you exit BIOS Setup.

Before explaining how to research the error messages and warnings you may see, let’s look at the categories of common booting errors.

Keyboard-Based Errors

Keyboard errors can happen for a few different reasons:

• Dead keyboard

• Malfunctioning keyboard (loose keyboard connection to the PC, stuck key or keys, moisture in the keyboard)

• Dead keyboard controller

For a dead keyboard, shut the PC down, remove the current keyboard (it connects at the back of the PC, near where your mouse connects), and replace it with a working keyboard.

A malfunctioning keyboard needs to have its specific problem resolved before it can be expected to work again. With the PC off, disconnect the keyboard and use compressed air or a small blunt device to try to unstick the key(s) or leave the keyboard upside down and detached to remove moisture. Then try the keyboard again. If you can’t fix the keyboard (and much beyond what I’ve already told you, you can’t), you need to replace it.

A dead keyboard controller, on the other hand, isn’t as simple as buying a replacement keyboard since the controller is located on the motherboard itself. This usually requires replacing the entire motherboard, but consult your motherboard or PC manufacturer to be sure.

There is one more situation in which you could see a keyboard-related error on bootup; this happens when your only keyboard is one that connects through your USB port rather than through the usual PS/2-style keyboard port. Because Windows has to start to load to begin the full recognition process for USB devices, a USB keyboard may not be recognized by a PC before Windows loads. You can usually get around this by simply adding a second standard (non-USB) keyboard to your system. However, you’re unlikely to experience this problem except when you first install a USB keyboard. If you don’t get the error then, you should be able to use the USB keyboard every time thereafter without an error.

Drive-Related Errors

Be aware that some of the more difficult errors to work around are drive-related errors at bootup. These errors usually occur because the PC cannot get a response from a needed drive such as your booting hard drive or the drive does not recognize that it is attached to the PC.

Note 

Chapter 17, “Resurrecting a Dead Hard Drive,” covers drive-related errors in detail.

If you’ve just installed a new hard drive or you’ve changed your drive configuration, shut down your system immediately, disconnect power, and go inside the case to verify that your connections are correct and firmly seated. If you inspect the hard drive’s ribbon cable, notice that one of the wires is red. The red wire must face the power connector. Go into BIOS Setup to be sure that the BIOS sees the drive and correctly reports the size and drive letter of the drive you’ve installed.

Some drive-related issues happen because some catastrophic event such as a virus or serious crash has corrupted or overwritten the master boot record (MBR) of a hard drive. In this situation, you need to resurrect a viable master boot record to let the drive work with the PC. You’ll learn later in this chapter how a Recovery Console command called fixmbr can help you do that (and you usually won’t lose your data doing so, but make sure your data is protected anyway).

How the drive is installed for use plays a huge role in whether it works, too. Note the following:

The hard drive requires 12 volts from the power supply to start up. It is possible to have a bad power supply when things like the case or keyboard LEDs still illuminate.

In a hard drive, pin 1 on the ribbon cable (the red wire) must face the hard drive’s power cable.

The power connector into the hard drive may not be seated correctly. The connector is keyed but not inserted all the way in. (This is one of the most common problems with a hard drive and the easiest to repair.)

If the hard drive is new and you installed it with a new cable, the new cable could be bad. Use the old cable prior to deeming your drive bad.

On certain floppy drives, the red wire may not face the power connector. Check with the floppy manufacturer for more information.

Warning 

If you’re getting recurrent drive errors each time you start your system, regardless of the steps you take to try to resolve them, make sure you copy that data off the drive just in case. As soon as you can get into Windows, back up this data.

Virus Warnings

If you try to start your PC and receive a message warning you about the presence or detection of a virus, stop and think before you panic. As discussed in Chapter 4, “Assembling Your PC Recovery Resource Kit,” have your anti-virus scanner available to run from either the hard drive itself (if it’s still operational) or from a floppy disk. Run the anti-virus scanner to try to remove the virus before you proceed.

Except for working with the anti-virus disk and any boot disks you may need for the process, avoid inserting other floppies into the floppy drive, especially when you need to turn off the PC. You don’t want to risk the chance that you will contaminate other disks, which can either reinfect you later or infect someone else who borrows a floppy from you. Most anti-virus programs have a virus detector that runs on floppies. You start the program, insert the floppy, run the test, and then insert another floppy. You must run this program on all your floppies. If you miss just one, that floppy could contain a virus that will cause you to start this procedure over again. If your floppy or e-mail system contaminates another system, you could be held liable for any damage to that system. You’d rather be safe than sorry.

No Errors Because There is No Display

This is a very common problem. This section describes the steps to take if you have a PC that may or may not be booting up properly but whose display you cannot see (meaning that you can hear it booting but you can’t see it).

First, check whether you made any change during the last session that may have affected this. A badly seated adapter that you just installed into your motherboard could account for this problem. Try to restore your system to its state prior to this change and see if you can now see the display.

Next, follow the cable that runs from the back of the monitor to the video adapter connector at the back of the PC. Both ends must be firmly connected. This cable cannot be damaged. A common problem is bent pins in the cable end. If they are bent, try (carefully) to bend them back with small needle nose pliers. If this fails, replace the cable. If the cable is molded into the monitor, bring the monitor into a qualified repair shop.

Then you need to look for a power indicator on your monitor. If it’s not lit, either the monitor is not getting power (so you need to make certain it’s plugged into a working power source) or it’s dead and needs to be repaired or replaced. But if the monitor is showing a lit power indicator, it’s not the power, yet it could still be a dead monitor (e.g., picture tube is gone) or something like a dead video adapter or even a dead motherboard. Simply plug the monitor into another PC. If the monitor works, the problem is in your PC (probably in the video adapter). If the monitor doesn’t work, either replace the monitor or drop it off at your friendly repair shop. Prior to sending it to a repair shop, ask them for a quote. If they say it’s $75 just to look at it and it’s a 15" monitor, it’s not worth repairing when you can get a brand-new monitor for about $100.

Resources for Checking Errors

Whatever the error you’re seeing, it may only make sense to you once you get more information, or at least more information than a small error message or warning box is likely to offer you. Some of the best sources for getting more details—along with possible solutions—for the error you’re seeing include

• Help and Support under Windows XP and Windows Millennium

• Your PC manual/documentation

• Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://search.support.microsoft.com)

• Software publisher’s web site

• Hardware manufacturer’s web site

  Tip 

  Some of these options require you to have another computer, or at least another means of getting into your currently disabled computer. This is another great reason to have a second PC available to you, either one you use in your home or office or one you can use at a friend’s or associate’s.