My bf has an Alienware Aurora 7500. Its about 1 1/2-2 years old. Today I went to put a cd in to the cd drive and by instinct went for the power button instead. I realized too late but just lightly hit the button. At this point I got the “Windows is shutting down” screen but I waited and it didn’t budge. So, I had to hold the button down and let it go off. When I turned it back on I got a black screen that said “Windows has ended unexpectedly, etc…” and then it gave the choices of whether to run it in safe mode or run it on the settings it was running on before, or it will just run automatically. No matter what we chosoe it makes it to the windows “booting” up screen then restarts. And continues to restart itself in one long vicious cycle. The only way to make it stop is to turn it off and then we’re back to square one, the black screen with all the choices.
Is this fixable? He tried to reformat it but now its saying that its missing a file so he can’t reformat the computer. Anyone have any ideas what is going on and what, if anything, can be done?
I know that the computer has been turned off in this manner before and this never happened. Why now?
In many cases this could be corrected by running chkdsk in the XP recovery console. As is now you probably need to reload clean. Depending on the unit, you might not be able to do so without some tech help. For example, the machine may be configured in RAID 0 and needs RAID drivers loaded prior to windows install.
When he starts to reformat an error message pops up. It read as follows:
“File name ? (546)
output error. File to the following location;
A;\GHOSTERR.TXT”
When he hits ok, another error box pops up it reads as follows:
“Error
Cannot open GHOSTERR.TXT - insert diskette (434)”
Thats it. Everytime he hits ok the same thing happens over and over. And we have no idea what this diskette is. Every he hits cancel the following box pops up:
"Application error 29004
Read sector failure, result=1, drive=1, sectors 131439 to 131503
If this problem persists, contact symantec technical support at http://service.symantec.com"
Our only choice from this point on is to press ok. When doing so the screen turns black as if its taking him to DOS. Where it says:
I’d forget the “format” for now (which doesn’t sound like it is, but anyhow). CHKDSK is run from the recovery console, which is why you need the install CD.
90% of the time CHKDSK fixes Windows-won’t-boot-past-the-boot-menu type issues (and the other 10% had bad HDs and were screwed anyhow).
A note to anyone who’s PC is bootable right now, you can (potentially) avoid the hassle of looking for an install CD by adding the Recovery Console to your Windows boot menu list. (Details here).
