We apologize for the inconvience. Windows did not start correctly."

**ruxCYtable** · 02-12-2010, 02:42 PM

Anyone ever seen this message? I fear the worst. Hard drive gone?

**DaddyMac** · 02-12-2010, 02:44 PM

Never seen it (thankfully)

But if you got to such a message (windows) then I'm guessing your drive hasn't failed. You'd get some bios message on that.

I'd do some searching on trying to start your PC in "safe mode"

**BigDISU1** · 02-12-2010, 02:51 PM

I am pretty sure your hard drive is still ok if Windows is sending you the message.

this might be a warning sign of a future hard drive failure, but most likely a configuration or software error

Your best best is to research as much as you can via message boards, google, etc.

I know i have had a many computer problems in the past (many self induced due to tampering with settings I probably should not have messed with). It can be very frustrating because you dont know if your data is going to be ok or not. Just take it easy and one step at a time and you will get it working again.

Worst case senario, you have to reinstall windows, but you should be able to backup your data before you had to take that step

**galactawitz** · 02-12-2010, 02:55 PM

The timing of this thread is very unusual. My mom just called me this morning to ask about the exact same thing. I told her it could be a hard drive going bad, or some corrupted files in the OS not allowing it to boot correctly.

HOWEVER, she said two of her friends computers did this exact same thing earlier in the week, and it was after she did a windows update. Do you know if yous updated recently?

Also, anyone know if there may be a known issue with Microsoft update? I run XP and this was a Vista machine I believe (hope)

**cmoore_23** · 02-12-2010, 03:06 PM

well I'm not going to update my windows now

**TykeClone** · 02-12-2010, 04:19 PM

Originally Posted by galactawitz

The timing of this thread is very unusual. My mom just called me this morning to ask about the exact same thing. I told her it could be a hard drive going bad, or some corrupted files in the OS not allowing it to boot correctly.

HOWEVER, she said two of her friends computers did this exact same thing earlier in the week, and it was after she did a windows update. Do you know if yous updated recently?

Also, anyone know if there may be a known issue with Microsoft update? I run XP and this was a Vista machine I believe (hope)

MS update gives some XP boxes the Blue Screen ? The Register

Is this a blue screen of death or some other error message?

**ruxCYtable** · 02-16-2010, 08:30 AM

Just a follow-up FYI. It turned out this problem was not related to the recent Windows update. A friend at work in IT let me borrow a MS ERD (Emergency Repair Disc). It booted up the PC and restored to last known good settings. I went in and didn't even find the patch in question and don't believe it was ever installed. However, Malwarebytes found several trojans and I am sure those were the cause of the problems.

Can someone explain to me why Malwarebytes, a free program, is finding all this stuff that my PAID ZoneAlarm "EXTREME" is not?

**Wesley** · 02-16-2010, 08:50 AM

I just had a computer fixed at best Buy last Nov. They did not remove all the viruses and turned off several components of XP. My buddy spent a portion of yesterday trying to resuscitate the blue screen. BB even turned off the Restore portion. Guess I will not have the Geeks fix viruses anytime soon with another computer.

As usual, everyone says Norton and MacAfee are not good virus protectors. What are the best virus protection prgrams that you use at this point of the rootkit attacks, etc?

My hard drive checked fine although my six month old 3nd video card collapsed, but the computer barely had a pulse as BB had turned off several key components such as computer firewall. The computer is now running on the original videocard.

No, it was not the resident viruses that reset this computer up for failure. It was sloppy fix back in Nov. BB even had bad diagnostic software for HP that caused them to mail the computer to Tennessee for hardware failure by mistake last Nov before realizing it was a different software problem. It was a painful $200 lesson.

I just bought a new computer last week and will avoid the Geeks.

**bos** · 02-16-2010, 08:55 AM

Originally Posted by ruxCYtable

Just a follow-up FYI. It turned out this problem was not related to the recent Windows update. A friend at work in IT let me borrow a MS ERD (Emergency Repair Disc). It booted up the PC and restored to last known good settings. I went in and didn't even find the patch in question and don't believe it was ever installed. However, Malwarebytes found several trojans and I am sure those were the cause of the problems.

Can someone explain to me why Malwarebytes, a free program, is finding all this stuff that my PAID ZoneAlarm "EXTREME" is not?

Every app in this category will find something the others didnt. Just the way of the beast.