Desktop PC fail to boot up (just restarts)

Hi All,

When I have turned my Dell 5150 pc on, it boots up and loads to the black screen saying 'We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this' etc.

I have tried choosing every option to boot in safe mode, last known good configuration & start windows normally etc... but the pc restarts and then boots back to the same screen as mentioned above when I choose each option?

I have recently made a change to the software by installing the previous version of Windows Live Messenger. I had Live Essentials installed, but I did not agree with it, so I went back to Live Messenger 2010. Also, after installing the Messenger software and restarting the pc, it stuck on the login stage when selecting a user to log in with for around 15-20mins. So, I pressed the power down button on the front of the pc to turn the system off and start it up again, and this is when I first had the windows did not start successfully message.

Can anyone please help with this problem, as I havent backed up any of my data on the pc and i dont really want to spend out on a new pc if this one can be fixed?

Thanks very much for any help you can give, really appreciated!

Aaron

PC Details:
Dell 5150 Desktop
Intel Pentium HT Processor
Win XP
4gb RAM
500GB Hard-drive (x2 250gb HDD)

 

Do you have a System Recovery CD or a Windows XP CD?

One of these will be needed in order to fix the problem. If you don't have either, you may be able to contact the manufacturer of the PC to order a System Recovery CD.

 

Hi,
Thanks for replying.
I have tried booting the pc from the cd drive using the recovery cd. But when the pc reboots, the system goes back to the same black screen saying there has been an error and sorry for the inconvenience etc. Nothing I do seems to have an effect on how the pc starts up?

Any help would be appreciated, I'm really stuck here.

Thanks,
Aaron

 

You might have to go into your BIOS and set it so the CD drive is what is read first, not the harddrive.

If you need instructions on how to do so, just ask.

 

Ive just gone into the BIOS and amended the boot up option to the cd drive to read first using the resource cd from Dell.

The cd then loads the hardware diagnosis screen and runs through various tests to see if there are any errors. After this has run for over 2hours, the test ended and did not display a summary of any problems etc? I only had a resource cd with my pc, not a recovery one?

Cheers