PC won't boot up

[mrjaffa]

Hi guys.

Running Windows 7, but not sure if this is a software issue or hardware.

I hadn't used my PC for a few months, I had unplugged it and moved it and now tried setting it back up. It's quite a number of years old and one I put together myself.

I seem to be going round in circles. It is currently giving a message that "windows is loading files", I also get the little "microsoft corporation" at the bottom of the screen as it tries to load. But then system repair pops up saying it has failed to repair the PC which is telling me that the registry is corrupt.

I've popped a Windows 7 CD in there and choose to boot from CD in the BIOS. I get the option to repair the the system using this, but that also failed. When I chose to then upgrade to WIndows 7 using the disc, it told me to reboot but not from the disc which I obviously can't.

My next step would be to do a clean install but of course don't want to lose everything on the hard drive.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[ThomasKK]

If you have another unused HDD drive nearby, i would recommend doing a fresh install on another drive and checking if it works: if it does, the old disc is corrupted and needs to be formatted. Also, you could try connecting your other PC's hard drive with windows already installed. Again, if it boots up, the old disc is corrupted, but if it does not, there might be problems with other components - dead or not connected properly (might be from the dust?).

 

[mrjaffa]

Thanks for your reply Thomas.

I'd already decided to do a clean install remembering that it usually detects old windows files and saves them for you in a "windows old" folder.

I have multiple drives in the PC and didn't realise, but I somehow selected the install on one of the other drives, which I wouldn't have done knowingly as I had nearly 2TB of data on there.

Anyway. It's installed and is working and I still have my data on this drive and can access the other drive which Windows was stored on and see all my files.

So all is well I guess. Just not sure whether I should leave Windows on this 2TB drive as that one was only for media as the other drive was only 250GB.

Hmmmm.... I really need a NAS as I'm only using the PC to store all my media on which is then connected to a media streamer....

 

[ThomasKK]

I think it depends on your needs, if the 2TB disc was for media and you want to keep it that way, then yes, you should reinstall windows on 250GB one. (i would do the same)

Glad you found a solution!