[public and therefore personal content free post] Geek help needed!

[angelmine]

I am currently using a borrowed laptop from work which runs XP. Today it has refused to start up properly. It makes the right kind of noises but then the screen stays blank (black). If I do cnt.alt.del then I can ask it to run a new programme (which is how I am online) but I can't seem to get to my desktop (and the little bit at the bottom of the

Comments

[softfruit]

If you ctrl-alt-del and tell it to run explorer, do the icons etc come back?

[angelmine]

They do :-) :-)

You star :-)

Will they stay now or do I have to do something more?

Thankyou :-)

[barakta]

It might be that Explorer which is the graphical windowsy bit of windows crashed.

What I'd advise is a clean shut down so that Windows can close everything down neatly, and then a restart so everything can open neatly as well.

[angelmine]

Ok. What is a clean shut down please?

[angelmine]

I tried closing everything, shutting down, waiting and then starting up again. Still blank black screen :-( I tried ctrl-alt-del again and then after asking it to run windows it came back. But it's not starting up properly...

[softfruit]

This is beyond my limited expertise sorry, but may be googleable and at least we now know that everything didnt just vanish.

[angelmine]

Thanks for helping me find it all though - at least I've been able to back up files and clear off personal stuff in case it does have to go back to work...

[barakta]

I'm not 100% about this either. Does it ever give you the option to start in safe mode?

I'll ask my partner if she's got any ideas. It sounds like Windows could do with a repair. A borrowed XP disk would probably repair the system reasonably well unfortunately I don't have a working disk for XP or I'd send it to you.

[angelmine]

I just tried and no, doesn't look like I can start in safe mode. It's set up with an IT account and a faculty account, as faculty (un=passworded) I don't think I have access to any admin wotsits so I'm not sure if I'd even be able to run a repair disk. Maybe I'll just have to take it back to work and plead with them...