hi folks, i'm hopin' you can help. i've dug myself i nice hole - decided to run diskscan and defrag overnight on my system (never backed up - that's right THAT's why i got this name: "dimwit") woke up in middle-of-night assuming defrag had "finished" (screen was black -no curser -no signal "black" so i shut off power (one button) hoping win would fix things up in morning and all would be well... no such luck! in morning i found windows would "boot" screen became visable again BUT here's the problem: Windows only goes as far as that Windows start up splash screen then it just sits -no hourglass icon, -no mouse curser, that's it. b4 we get technical i'd just like to say that i do understand i should try to start win in safe mode (tried it - same result) so i'm willing to attempt the "command prompt" angle but i just want to make sure there isn't another option that might allow me to get my windows back without erasing or losing any of my "precious" files here's my un-educated guess as to what happened: my power shut off interupted the defrag causing some trouble like fouling up a driver or a file necessary to start windows or a corruption of the registry or a dozen or so other possibilities I'm willing to pursue the right one or two just don't want to have to try them all. can anybody out there sort this mess out and give me some kinda level-headed advice ? i'd sure be grateful to anybody who's taken the time to read this far and has a good idea - sincere, dimwit ps. i would be pleased to provide ANY "details" specifics, if anyone requests

Not sure if you've done this but if not, go to the startup menu and select Command Prompt Only instead of Safe Mode. Type scandisk and hit Return. I'm just wondering if a few clusters got messed up. DerekW

You can try scanreg at the command prompt also. ASUS A7V8X Athlon XP 2700+ @ 2.17ghz 768MB DDR 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE NEC ND-3500AG DVD R/RW

.... yep. Scanreg /fix can be useful, or scanreg /restore and select a registry dated just before you did your thing. DerekW

i'll be happy to use your suggestion as long as it won't render any files in windows un-retrievible later on am i making any sense ? don't wanna lose certain files (text and .slt) which i can not replace. (four years worth of work) my thanks to you again dimwit

Scanreg /restore will not affect any files that you want to save. Personally I don't think it will help. I would suggest reinstalling windows 'on top' (without a format). You will lose any windows updates, but your other files 'should' remain intact.

Whatever you do to a computer I suppose there has got to be some slight risk but none of the suggestions so far should loose your own stuff, and they all normally go quite well. I've had no trouble with any of them. Both scanreg /restore and overlaying Windows might mean that the odd program has to be installed again. DerekW