# Power Outage, Now Computer won't Start Up **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 12, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479 "2007-10-12T15:51:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/1 "2007-10-12T15:51:46Z")
Had a power outage last night, when it came back got a screen telling me Windows didn’t shut down properly and asked if I wanted to start normally, with the last known configuration, or in safe mode. I tried all of them and none worked. I would see the Windows logo and hear the disk spinning for a couple of seconds and then it would go back to the message. Tried F10 to go into recovery mode, tried putting in the HP recovery disk I made, nothing happens. I thought about getting to a friend’s computer and making a boot disk, could that help? ---
**Author:** ![arseNal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@arseNal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arseNal)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/2 "2007-10-12T19:50:54Z")
It goes back to that message? Without rebooting? That sounds pretty messed up. Any more details you can give as to exactly what happens when you select one of the menu choices? For recovery operations, I recommend making a [BartPE](http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) disc. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2007, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/3 "2007-10-12T20:47:36Z")
[QUOTE=Fiddle Peghead] Had a power outage last night, when it came back got a screen telling me Windows didn’t shut down properly and asked if I wanted to start normally, with the last known configuration, or in safe mode. I tried all of them and none worked. I would see the Windows logo and hear the disk spinning for a couple of seconds and then it would go back to the message. Tried F10 to go into recovery mode, tried putting in the HP recovery disk I made, nothing happens. I thought about getting to a friend’s computer and making a boot disk, could that help? [/QUOTE] My guess would be that when the power went, it fried one of your components, and the boot sequence is bombing when it hits that component. If it were mine, the first thing I would do is disconnect all non-essential components (including keyboard, mouse, etc). If it boots then you’ve found the problem. If not, then you may have to start disconnecting/bypassing essential components (such as using a boot disk to bypass the hard drive). Once I had an internal modem get fried by a lightning strike… the computer would do absolutely nothing at all, not even power on the fans, but when I removed the internal modem, it acted as if nothing had happened. ---
**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2007, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/4 "2007-10-12T21:23:07Z")
I had a computer running XP on a FAT32 hard disk and would give me exactly the same problem as your computer each time the power was out. The solution is to boot using the Windows XP CD and when prompted press R to start the recovery console. Then type chkdsk /f /r and press Enter. It will take at least 20 minutes for the program to finish. When it finishes you can restart the computer and pray it will start normally. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2007, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/5 "2007-10-12T23:08:35Z")
What **exactly** happens? Do you get a BSOD and then a reboot? If so, you should try to disable the reboot so you can see exactly what it says on the blue screen. Quite often it will be INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE, whereon you should fire up your restore disk, drop to a command prompt, and run CHKDSK. Do note that if you’ve set up some sort of software RAID, then you’ll needto provide the driver anew. Another thing you can try is there’s an option on startup to list all the device drivers Windows is loading. Select that and see where it fails. If the last one you see is AGP440.sys then it’s failing after loading all the drivers. You may find that it’s failing on a driver with an obvious name, in which case you may have found your problem. Having done that, you should be able to load a System Restore Point. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2007, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/6 "2007-10-13T02:45:10Z")
Well I can’t make a Bart CD, my computer didn’t even come with a Windows CD. I made a recovery disk following HP’s instructions. And I can’t make one here at my brother’s because he has Vista. Here is exactly what happens. I get a black screen with white letters, I have the option to boot normally, with the last known good configuration, and in safe mode with a command prompt or without. I use the arrow keys to select one, and press enter. The Windows logo comes up for a second, the disk starts spinning, then I hear it stop. Then it goes back to that black screen. The disk starting and then stopping after a couple of seconds happened a couple of times in the past, I was able to “fix” it by unplugging the power cord and then rebooting, that may or may not have anything to do with what is happening now. I read elsewhere that it may be a problem with the power supply, maybe that’s why I had problems in the past. I don’t think anything is fried, the keyboard and mouse works. By pressing F10 I go into HP recovery, but then I get some message about something not being found, some file or something I can’t remember. I think this is trying to access the built in recovery program. I’ve also tried inserting the Recovery disk I created but I can’t access it. ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2007, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/7 "2007-10-13T04:30:28Z")
[QUOTE=Fiddle Peghead] By pressing F10 I go into HP recovery, but then I get some message about something not being found, some file or something I can’t remember. I think this is trying to access the built in recovery program. I’ve also tried inserting the Recovery disk I created but I can’t access it. [/QUOTE] Could it be one of these messages? Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate System error: Lsass.exe This is an error that crops up sometimes when you lose power and windows ends without being able to shut down properly. Fortunately, it’s usually recoverable, but the recovery is much easier to do if you can temporarily mount the drive in another system. See this article: [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/) for the official Microsoft solution to this problem. It does work, but you have to follow it very carefully. For another solution, I copied this message by another doper (I’m sorry I neglected to note the name, whoever it is, THANKS!) and have used these instructions a half dozen times (most recently last week) to recover from the same errors. > [@unknown doper](#): > > Once you’ve got the drive migrated into a working XP machine, you need to go to your Folder Options and make sure that the check boxes are set to (a) view hidden files, and (b) view critical Operating System files. You will be warned that these are both bad ideas. Don’t sweat it. > > In my case, the parasite drive was E:, so I went to E:\WINDOWS\system32\config and made backup copies of the files > > default > sam > security > system > software > > in that directory. I simply renamed them to \*.bak, in case I (ha ha) wanted to restore to the previous, non-working condition. > > I went to the System Volume Information folder in E:, and after looking up how a WinXP Home user opens this file under NTFS, opened it successfully. (WinXP won’t let you open the folder, even as admin, but it will let you try to share the folder on the LAN. After this process fails, you are able to look at the contents of the folder. The process is different depending on the version of XP and the filesystem you’re using.) > > In this folder, I found a sub-folder called “\_restore{1756EDF7-C75F-481E-8EBF-9B466A0579E5}” (YMMV on the name) and opened it. Inside this, there was a cornucopia of folders called RPxxx, where “xxx” is a three-digit number. I opened the highest-numbered of these, and found a “snapshot” folder containing old, slightly-renamed, copies of the five files above (default and the four S-words, each with something like “USER.RESTORE.REGISTRY.” appended to the filename). I copied these to E:\WINDOWS\system32\config and then renamed them to the shortened forms of their names. > > I powered my machine down, migrated the drive over to the ailing box, and the booted her machine into WinXP. The one oddity was that I had to re-activate her copy of WinXP on startup. Other than that, it was just like doing a manual system restore. > > If you are lucky enough that you have access to the “recovery console,” you can perform this operation without a second computer, but it requires two leaps of faith. The first is to replace the five system files above with their original versions, typically found in C:\WINDOWS\repair, via the command-line interface of the Recovery Console. Your computer at this point will act like WinXP has been freshly installed. You may think you are completely hosed. Follow the steps above using the GUI, and if you’ve been a good boy and made restore points regularly, you should have your system back up and running in no time. > > It’s like being able to manually force the use of a known good restore point in WinXP, regardless of whether WinXP wants you to know the restore point is there. Hope someone stumbles across this and it does some good. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2007, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/8 "2007-10-13T08:18:42Z")
If you press F8 straight off, you’ll get many more options. ---
**Author:** ![Yag\_Rannavach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/858c86/32.png) [@Yag\_Rannavach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yag_Rannavach)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2007, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/9 "2007-10-13T16:57:55Z")
[QUOTE=Fiddle Peghead] By pressing F10 I go into HP recovery, but then I get some message about something not being found, some file or something I can’t remember. [/QUOTE] Ya know, it’s much easier to debug an issue like this if we have all the information. Reboot your computer with the HP recovery program and write down the file that’s missing. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2007, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/power-outage-now-computer-wont-start-up/422479/10 "2007-10-14T20:40:33Z")
Some new info. When I try F10 for recovery I get the following message: “The section IDA\_create\_user\_drive\_u does not contain a valid dialog template.” When I press OK, it minimizes and nothing happens. Thanks for your responses so far.