serious PC problem

scotsoft · August 01, 2015, 07:38:06 PM

I am hoping one of you bright people may be able to help me with a problem I have with my computer.

I was using my computer then came away from it leaving it switched on but with nothing running. When I went back to it, the mouse and keyboard were frozen and I had no choice but to press and hold the power button to get it to shutdown. When I started it up again it only went so far then it froze.

I have an original Windows 7 CD, when I put it in the CD drive the PC should boot from the CD first. I get the options to either boot from the CD or start Windows normally. It makes no difference which one I choose, the PC starts to load the files then stops/ freezes.
I thought once I had found the Windows CD Rom my problems would be quickly over, how wrong was I.

If you have any suggestions I would be very grateful as I find using my phone or tablet very trying.

Cheers John.

oscar · August 01, 2015, 07:52:40 PM

I'm not an expert, but can you start it in safe mode and go from there? I think you have to hold F2 or something as you start it. You can try all the F buttons, it won't hurt; but I'm sure a geek will be along shortly to put me right!
Good luck,

MikeDunn · August 01, 2015, 08:17:00 PM

Really hope that using the DVD you didn't install anything ... fingers crossed.

Anyway - boot in as normal but hold / press repeatedly the F8 key for Safe Mode. Select the Safe Mode (with networking) and you should get a basic Win7 system ... From there, close down & restart as normal - should be OK ...

[edit] Give "Last Known Good" a try before you give Safe Mode a go ... just recalled this option ...

austinbob · August 01, 2015, 08:26:30 PM

Quote from: scotsoft on August 01, 2015, 07:38:06 PM
I am hoping one of you bright people may be able to help me with a problem I have with my computer.

I was using my computer then came away from it leaving it switched on but with nothing running. When I went back to it, the mouse and keyboard were frozen and I had no choice but to press and hold the power button to get it to shutdown. When I started it up again it only went so far then it froze.

I have an original Windows 7 CD, when I put it in the CD drive the PC should boot from the CD first. I get the options to either boot from the CD or start Windows normally. It makes no difference which one I choose, the PC starts to load the files then stops/ freezes.
I thought once I had found the Windows CD Rom my problems would be quickly over, how wrong was I.

If you have any suggestions I would be very grateful as I find using my phone or tablet very trying.

Cheers John.

John Do you have an F?? key on boot up which allows you to go into a system repair mode (mine has) - If you do then have you tried system restore (assuming you have it switched on) - go back to the last saved version.
Otherwise - if you have a 'Recovery' partition, as a last resort you can reinstall your system to factory defaults. Unfortunately you then have to reinstall everything and may lose your data if its all on the C: drive

Caz · August 01, 2015, 08:45:28 PM

Another possibility is that your memory chips have failed, my old desktop PC did this a few years ago and an new memory board brought it back to life.

scotsoft · August 01, 2015, 09:01:08 PM

Quote from: MikeDunn on August 01, 2015, 08:17:00 PM
Really hope that using the DVD you didn't install anything ... fingers crossed.
I did not install anything from the Windows CD, I was/ am prepared to reinstall Windows if need be but I cannot get that far before it freezes.

Anyway - boot in as normal but hold / press repeatedly the F8 key for Safe Mode. Select the Safe Mode (with networking) and you should get a basic Win7 system ... From there, close down & restart as normal - should be OK ...
Tried that with no success

[edit] Give "Last Known Good" a try before you give Safe Mode a go ... just recalled this option ...
I did that also and the still froze.

I have never had a memory chip fail on me and that would be an expensive thing to eliminate.

Thank you all for your suggestions so far, please keep them coming.

Cheers John.

MikeDunn · August 01, 2015, 09:51:40 PM

It's unclear - can you get into Safe Mode ?

scotsoft · August 01, 2015, 10:09:48 PM

No, I cannot get into safe mode.
The computer is freezing just as it starts to load in Windows and it is always at the same point that it freezes.

I did try a few of the options that were available for me to choose from.

dannyboy · August 01, 2015, 10:38:27 PM

I realise that I have W8 on my laptop, but I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago. (Could not do anything - safe start/system restore etc.). I forget why, but I had to restore the laptop to factory settings. Once I did that, the laptop did exactly what yours is doing. Apparently, because of the restoring of factory settings, the laptop had downloaded over 120 windows updates.

. From what I found out later, most laptops can not cope with so many updates, so it 'goes to sleep' and appears to have frozen.

. It eventually sorts itself out and starts to work normally, although it did take about 3 hours!

. My problem probably bears no relation to yours, but it just might help you, (or someone else). I hope you do get it sorted out though. David.

scotsoft · August 01, 2015, 10:54:30 PM

Thank you David

I have left it in it's frozen state to see if anything happened but it just stayed frozen

Jack · August 01, 2015, 11:02:04 PM

What sort of age is the patient?

scotsoft · August 01, 2015, 11:10:58 PM

Quote from: Jack on August 01, 2015, 11:02:04 PM
What sort of age is the patient?

I can't give you an exact answer to that as I can't remember, but it will be around five or six years old.

Jack · August 01, 2015, 11:18:43 PM

Quote from: scotsoft on August 01, 2015, 11:10:58 PM
Quote from: Jack on August 01, 2015, 11:02:04 PM
What sort of age is the patient?

I can't give you an exact answer to that as I can't remember, but it will be around five or six years old.

It's getting on in life but that's not necessary a reason for your problem.

Is it a desktop and if so when was the last time you had the side panel of to remove any dust blankets that's formed inside? I'm pondering that something is overheating and therefore shutting down.

scotsoft · August 01, 2015, 11:23:18 PM

Quote from: Jack link=topic=28994.msg321815#msg321815

It's getting on in life but that's not necessary a reason for your problem.

Is it a desktop and if so when was the last time you had the side panel of to remove any dust blankets that's formed inside? I'm pondering that something is overheating and therefore shutting down.

Good idea but surely it would only shutdown after it has been running and not when booking up first thing.

Cheers John.

Jack · August 02, 2015, 12:02:57 AM

You're right John, I had assumed it had been running for sometime when the symptoms started appearing, you mentioned in your first post that you were using it, left it for a while and it's when you came back to it that you had the problem.

Something inside me is saying leave the patient to go completely cold, ie switch it off and unplug it until the morning. If it comes into life then side panel off and a good clean inside may help it along. You obviously have another PC/laptop/tablet/smartphone to communicated with or else how are you able to post on the Forum. If you still have a problem then the next stage for me would be to think about the following.

Are you able to get into the System BOIS, it's normally achieved by pressing and holding down ESC or F2 while powering up? It the area where you can change and configure basic settings.

If you can't get into the BIOS settings I would begin to think that the motherboard or some other major component, such as the cpu, has develop a problem, and with the age of the patient it would be uneconomical to source a repair.

If you are able to get into the BIOS it could be that your hard drive may have failed.

At this point John I'm sorry I can't be more helpful to you.