Computer wont start windows

[gregbradley]

I had a problem with my laptop the other day. It was left on but with the lid shut, there was a brief shutdown in the power and when I tried to use it again it won't boot up.

Before that I was getting this error 55 file open message. I got an answer from Ray Gralak that the Astrophysics driver ini file needs to be deleted. He said that I should do a deek system search for AP.INI files and delete them.

I tried to download a few different softwares that claim to fix registry errors and active X errors. They usually demand money after they "find" lots of errors. They will fix the first few on the list. I did a few of those and I wonder if that is related.

The system restore command comes back and says it could not restore some files. I have used the system recovery page that comes up and done a checkdisk etc. I have tried to open in safe mode and it sticks at a certain point.

Any suggestions? Its got 50 hours of recent imaging data ready to be processed on it as well.

Greg.

[BeanerSA]

Get the hard drive out, and backup the imaging data, then wipe the hard drive and re-install windows.

[redbeard]

I would do what Paul mentioned too. Unless you have just built it.

One thing that may help to pin point the issue is to see what driver is attempting to load when it sticks during safe mode. I think this info flashes by in text after selecting safe mode as each driver loads. This may point to hardware perhaps.

Good luck!

[gregbradley]

It stuck at a driver for PNP (plug and play?).

Greg.

[acropolite]

Hard drives are cheap, I just bought a 1Tb for W10 install for around $100, buy another HDD and keep the old one with whatever data is there intact and do what Paul suggested. All SATA drives use the same connectors, you should be able to put the laptop drive in a desktop machine as a secondary drive and read the contents. If later you find there's something you've missed you still have the old HDD to go back to.
If you don't have a suitable desktop PC, HDD cloning docks are relatively cheap and can be used as a read device. I avoid recovery software like the plague, there are a lot of dodgy products out there.

[redbeard]

A long shot but check the bios and some have a setting related to plug and play OS. Perhaps turn it on if it is off.

Cheers

[gregbradley]

All good tips. I'll try that bios one.

I am not sure if it was the problem with the AP driver receiving a power interruption that's caused the crash or the dodgy "clean up your computer and resolve activeX problem" softwares I downloaded. One took a long time to download which was suspicious as most of these programs are only 8mb.

Prior to running those the computer was running fine and just gave that "error 55 file open" when I tried to activate the AP driver V5.02.

I hope that AP driver is not dangerous software.

Greg.

[Sato]

Have you tried booting into safe mode? Press F8 until you see the prompt page. Choose safe mode & continue. If it boots ok then a driver or 'something' is preventing normal boot up. You can then uninstall what you think is bad. Of course your system will be in basic mode so don't worry about low screen res.

[Sato]

First, apologies for not reading properly...I jumped at the driver sticking point! Anyway, one possibility is to boot with linux & make some moves from there. Here's one link but there are many others.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/31804/the-10-cleverest-ways-to-use-linux-to-fix-your-windows-pc/

[gregbradley]

Thanks Dom.

Greg.