I am asking a question about another computer in my home, not the one I am typing/sending on. I am VERY basic in computer knowledge. I was given a older computer from a friend. All I know is it has Windows XP and Intel Celeron inside. (told u I was basic). Well, for a few weeks it worked fine except for admin. locks. After one night of the computer having to immediatley shut down windows, I get this screen almost as soon as I turn it on: We apologize for the inconvience, but Windows did not start sucessfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this. If your computer stopped responding, restarted unexpectedly, or was automatically shut down to protect your files and folders, choose Last Known Good Configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked. If a previous startup attempt was interrupted due to a power failure or because the Power or Reset button was pressed, choose Start Windows Normally Safe Mode Safe Mode with Networking Last Known Good Configuration Start Windows Normally No matter which one I choose, it shows Windows XP logo with white bar running, the Intel logo..... then RIGHT BACK To That "We Apologize..." screen. I did the f8 hold to go to the window screen, but it just goes through the same stuff. PLLLEEASSSE someone give me an idea of what to do?

If you have a Windows XP Installation CD, you can pop it in and do a repair install of XP: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/X... Scroll down to "XP Repair Install." If you don't have a Windows XP CD, you can either: - Buy one or borrow one from a friend - See if it could be a hardware problem by removing all PCI cards, floppy and CD drives, and disconnecting all USB/Firewire devices from the system. Leave the hard drive plugged in as well as your graphics card if you have one (can't rule these out either though) and then try to boot up. Make sure Jesus is your Saviour! WinSimple Software (now with 0 ads)

Always remove or switch off the AC power to your case/power supply whenever you fiddle with any connection or component inside your computer case! A Repair install may not work if the problem is your hard drive is defective. Check your hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... (thanks to Dan Penny for this link:) Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm... If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to. ........ "If you don't have a Windows XP CD, you can either: - Buy one or borrow one from a friend" If your system has a brand name system software installation on in, going by my previous experience, you do NOT have the option of the second Repair option in Setup required to run a Repair Setup procedure (often called a Repair install, but what you're actually doing is running Setup again) - that choice is NOT there, even if you run Setup from a regular Windows CD! If your system is generic and/or Windows was installed using a regular CD, you do have that second Repair option, but only if the CD you use is NOT the original version that does not have SP1 or SP2 updates included on it (whether it does or not is printed on the original CD). If you do not see that second Repair option in the Setup, there are other things you can try. OR, you can try those other things BEFORE you attempt a Repair Setup.

Thanks Tubes for adding the point about disconnecting the AC. To further what Tubes said, if that PC came with a Restore CD, that would work too, but always remember to backup first because everything on the hard drive is lost during the restoration process. I've worked on several name brand PCs, and in all cases I've always seen the Repair option. I'm not trying to disagree with Tube's point, but a repair install may work anyway. IMO, it's a 50/50 chance. WinSimple Software

I admit I haven't had much experience fixing brand name software installations - most people I know that I have fiddled with their computers have generic systems, or the original brand name software has been deleted and a regular Windows CD was used to reload it. I'm just saying it can be the case you don't have the second choice going by my meagre experience. The previous experience I had was with a Compaq tower system original software Home SP2 installation a friend of the owner had messed up by also installing Pro on the drive's second partition without deleting the first partition and, somehow, seemingly, without deleting the second partition data. The original problem was it was rebooting for no apparent reason - I turned off autoreboot and that revealed it was caused by an improperly made third party lesser brand anti-virus file update, which I un-installed and installed AVG free, but there were other problems as well. There was no second Repair option even when I used a regular XP Home SP2 CD. The second partition was almost 100% full. I tried a dual boot config, but neither XP worked properly, and obviously she could no longer restore her original software using only a single Recovery CD and the contents of the untouched second partition. I ordered a Recovery CD set for it (it was less than 3 years old; 5 CDs?, $27.03 inc. moderately fast shipping) and restored the drive. I found out after I had already ordered it she had already made the set but had forgotten that was what it was called. A few months after that she got rid of it and got a latop, tried that for a while, then got rid of that too because she had too much trouble making out tiny stuff on the screen. All that time she had my email address, and my phone number. I could have pointed out she could have used an external monitor of whatever size she liked with the laptop (she got it because it took up less space - she had little or no need for it to be portable), and I could have helped her give away or sell cheap the tower computer to someone with little money. Oh well. At least I benefitted from the experience. The only other messed up brand name system installation I attempted to repair was a HP Pavilion that had an inaccessible faulty hard drive, and there was no single Recovery CD or Recovery CD set available for it. I installed XP on it from a regular CD of the same Home version on a new hard drive, and the product key on the case works fine with that. I had examined this computer original software installtion before the drive had malfunctioned. There was no HP supplied program to make a Recovery CD set, or a single Recovery CD, and it did not appear you could use the CD that came with it along with the contents of the second partition to restore the contents of C, and there was no single Recovery CD or Recovery CD set available for it (it was about 4 years old at that time; it was made in 2001 or 2002 and has a crappy Cognac mboard first released in 1998 with no AGP slot, and has a minmal capacity proprietary smaller sized PS), but you had the option or ordering a hard drive from HP with the original software already installed on it (you didn't when I looked after the hard drive had failed). The original XP CD versions not having the capability has applied with every such CD I have tried.