need help, cannot startup

C

claycoconut

Member
Hi, im quite a computer idiot so bear with me

im using a 3+ year old second hand sony VGN-C25G vaio laptop running on vista home
recently my computer blue screened everytime i turn it on, just before the sign up page
so i did some homework and found this http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Recovering+the+Vista+Bootloader+from+the+DVD
i burnt the cd, followed the instructions, everything in step 2 did not change anything
reading step3, i realised that the cd did not have bootsect.exe, and so i dled it from the internet and burnt a new cd
followed the instructions, but
del C:\boot\bcd
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
didnt work
so i closed command prompt and restarted the computer
to my surprise normal startup seems to have somewhat worked, except that it always starts with the screen completely black except for 2 windows, one being the system properties and the other about performing offline system restore, needing to specify which windows installation i would like to restore.
upon closing both windows, everything started to load, background, desktop shortcuts, even eset started to load.
to my dismay it blue screened in less than a minutes time
ive tried putting back the vista recovery disc from the link above again but nothing happened.
safe mode works like normal startup with the system properties and the thing about system restore but doesnt blue screen.
any help would be greatly appreciated ><
 
If you're getting to the welcome screen, it's not a boot problem that can be fixed with the repair CD.
You can use the CD to put you into "command prompt" and use it to run a chkdsk /r against your Vista partition to see if that will find and fix HDD problems which could be reponsible.

Before doing anything else to try recovering your system though, I'd start with
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/
and try to save all of your user data to external storage first.

When you're happy that that's safe, go ahead trying to fix the system, starting as described above.
Ultimately though, you might need to invoke the Sony "factory reset".
I can no longer tell you how to do that as Sony have made the public website which used to describe the procedure a "registered users only" site.
You're on your own seeking through that.
 
it boots fine, just that it blue screens in barely a minute after boot
typed chkdsk /r, "the type of the file system is NTFS. Cannot lock current drive, Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected."

sonys website was useless, ubuntu is a cool program, but i backed up all my files from safe mode, thanks anyways.

just this morning my friend passed me a legit windows 7 installation disc and he told me that installing it may solve the problem, however when i tried custom installation, an error message said " windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files required for installation are available,and restart the installation. any idea what this may be refering to?

and lastly thanks for replying :grinning:
 
You need to point the chkdsk at your OS partition on the HDD (whatever letter the recovery environment sees it as). Running chkdsk without a target partition letter will default to trying to check itself (the CD), hence "read only".
See the syntax in the link..
I use W7 99% of the time, but I keep Vista, XP and Ubuntu partitions multi-bootable, for special purposes and backup/recovery belt & braces.
Despite the fact that Vista hadn't been booted for weeks and when last used was 100% hunky-dory, I still got a message (in W7) that errors had been detected (and fixed) in my Vista partition (which should have been idle in advanced power options).
Despite all attempts to fix it, it remained stubornly broken and I had eventually to reinstall it from my DVD.
HDD diagnostics confirmed that my HDD was 100% error free, yet Vista still managed to break down whilst idle under wraps , parked up in the multi-boot garage. I've never been able to fathom how an idle OS can fail on a HDD without a single bad block reported.
None of this is particularly relevant to you, but just a warning that sometimes there's just nothing you can do to fix a borked system short of a reinstall, so if your Sony handbook doesn't tell you (or you didn't get it with the PC), I'd persist with the website because you might need to know the correct procedure for "factory reset" from your hidden recovery partition.
 
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