My computer crashed!! I'm going crazy!!!

[DonnaM]

Went out of town this weekend. Found a neat pocket knife and couldn't wait to get home and post. Got home and my computer had crashed!! Well, maybe. I don't know a lot about computers. All I know is I keep getting this black screen with a bunch of writing on it telling me different ways to restart my computer to fix the problem. The problem is, my computer keeps restarting on its own! Every time, it goes back to that screen that tells me to restart my computer!!! I tried turning it off. That didn't work. It still goes back to that screen. It's not under warranty anymore so Microsoft won't help unless I pay them. Anybody on here a computer whiz with some ideas????? Every picture I've taken for the last 2 years is on there and I'm so afraid I'm going to lose them
Yeah, I know. I procrastinated on saving them to a disc.

[ObMiT]

What version of windows are you running? At what point in the boot-up do you get the restart computer message?

[DonnaM]

Windows xp. Ok it acts like it's signing on up to the point where normally there would be the sign-on screen where you put in the password. At that point, instead, it goes to the black screen with all the words on it.

[PAPPY]

When it goes back to the black screen, see if it gives you an F2 prompt. If so...Hit F2 to restore....What windows program are you using? XP..Professional...Home...Office ?

[DonnaM]

Xp home. And no, it's not giving an F2 prompt. It gives you about 4 different options of how to restart your computer and says use the arrow key to scroll to the one you want to use. I tried them all. But it continues to restart itself over and over.

[MinelabMan]

If you have the original xp disk you can try starting from that and select the repair option, but don't choose the option to repair your computer using the Recovery Console at the "Welcome to Setup" screen, you may lose your data, instead just press enter which should start the windows setup program, when windows lists your current installation, select it and and then press "R" to start the repair process. This should work unless you have serious disk damage or registry corruption. Good luck!

[ObMiT]

Sorry, I didn't mean to leave you hanging. I got called into a meeting.

MinelabMan is on the right track. Use theXP installation disk that came with your computer. Not the recovery disk but the authentic windows xp disk. You can boot your computer with it and let it "repair" your windows installation. This will not delete any of your personal files, it will just repair the files that have been damaged or corrupted.

Be careful not to use a recovery disk or system restore disk as it will completely wipe out all your data.

[DonnaM]

Thanks guys!! I am sure I have that disc somewhere on my computer desk. I'll try that when I get home. I really appreciate your advice. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

[DonnaM]

Wanted to thank you all for your help again. Alas, my computer is toast!!! Advice to everyone: Be SURE to save ALL of your pictures on a disk every time you download!!!! I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my daughter had done this for me a while back for 2 years worth of pics. Bad news is, I lost most of 2007 pictures which included 2 of my kids' high school graduations! My siblings took pics of these also, so I'm sure I can recover those from them.
I repeat: DO NOT PROCRASTINATE!!! Back up all your stuff!!!!

[bdahunter]

There are plenty of services that will reclaim data off of a fried harddrive. It wouldn't cost much to have them try to recover those precious pictures. Worth $100 to get those precious memories back.

JMHO,

BDA