HP Pavilion Running WinMe fails to load Windows

[charleston10876]

I've got an HP Pavilion running WinME thats 3 years old which for some reason decided several weeks ago to start booting correctly, with the exception of displaying the wallpaper and the taskbar for a brief second, and then hanging permanently. In other words, when I start the computer everything boots correctly, and when the Login box appears, I login or click cancel to get to the desktop. The wallpaper displays, as does the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, but only for a split second, and then it disappears. The computer then hangs permanently and sits staring at me in smug defiance. Since this little situation appeared several weeks ago I've bought a new computer, and the only reason I am spending time on this is because I have lots of information I'd like to get off of the old hard drive (that, and the CD burner in my new computer makes CD's which won't play in my 4 year old Pioneer car stereo - anybody have any input on that and know a way to work around it? (short of buying a new car stereo, thanks)) I've done searches on Google for bootable CD images, which I've tried, and apparently my new computer refuses to boot from the CD drive, as far as I can tell, although I could be wrong. I'd like to find a bootable CD image which will let me at least boot to DOS, but I haven't been able to find one so far. I'd make a bootable floppy with my new machine, but it doesn't have a floppy drive, and I'm not spending the $$ on a USB floppy at this point. I do have the 3 system recovery CD's that came with the computer, but there are no directions with them, and I can't get them to do anything, so right now they are worthless to me.

(I realize this is long, but I'm trying to include all parts of the problem and the things that I have tried to fix it up to this point.)

Ideally what I would like is to restore 100% functionality to the OS in my Me machine simply so I can retrieve the data I need to and burn a bunch of CD's with my old burner (which makes CD's my car stereo WILL play...although I tried installing my old burner on my new machine and XP threw a fit and disabled the drivers.) However, at this point I think restoring 100% functionality might be a little much to hope for, though I hope someone proves me wrong! Thanks in advance to anyone who tries to tackle this!

Computer Info:
HP Pavilion xt919
WinMe
800Mhz Celeron
Phoenix BIOS v. 4.0 release 6.0.A
128MB RAM

[winbyte]

A couple of options may be open to you short of getting out the hammer and having some kind of closure with the said hammer....

Try holding your F8 key while booting to try and get to the boot menu. If you get there then select SAFE MODE. If you are lucky then you will be able to at least get to windows and maybe, just maybe, try to get SYSTEM RESTORE to take you back in time to a happier place. If you get this far then try some basic things like cleaning out all your files in your TEMP folder and do the same for TEMP INTERNET and cookies as well. If your TEMP folder is full of crap it may cause your system to act the way it is. The TEMP folder is also used as virtual memory for your ram. But then again, you may have a problem with your ram as well. *shrugs at this point.

Another thing to try is to use your rescue disks. Check your cmos settings to make your computer boot from the CD drive first. Make sure that your cd is in the drive. If all goes well you may be able to boot to windows by having the disc recreate the core windows files and directories.

Another thought is to remove the harddrive from the old computer and set the jumpers on it to make it a slave drive in your new computer. Once recognized there you should be able to transfer any files from it to your new harddrive. A note of safety at this point, be sure to have an up todate virus scanner installed and functioning on your new computer to safeguard against virus that may be lurking on the old drive.

It is late so I will leave you with that for now and my best wishes. I will take a look at the other issues tomorrow.

[charleston10876]

"Try holding your F8 key while booting to try and get to the boot menu. If you get there then select SAFE MODE. If you are lucky then you will be able to at least get to windows and maybe, just maybe, try to get SYSTEM RESTORE to take you back in time to a happier place. If you get this far...."

I tried this, with the same unfortunate result as earlier. :-(

"Another thing to try is to use your rescue disks. Check your cmos settings to make your computer boot from the CD drive first. Make sure that your cd is in the drive. If all goes well you may be able to boot to windows by having the disc recreate the core windows files and directories."

I also tried this...with no luck.. I can't seem to get the restore disks to do anything, even after trying to find directions on the Web from HP etc.

"Another thought is to remove the harddrive from the old computer and set the jumpers on it to make it a slave drive in your new computer. Once recognized there you should be able to transfer any files from it to your new harddrive. A note of safety at this point, be sure to have an up todate virus scanner installed and functioning on your new computer to safeguard against virus that may be lurking on the old drive."

While I do have up to date AV on my new machine, the thought of undertaking something like sounds dangerous to my new machine. To say nothing of the fact that I have no idea whatsoever how to do something like this, and I wasn't even able to find out the brand/manufacturer of my old computer's hard drive. Exactly how much of a project is something like this and how much fire, if any, would I be playing with?

[winbyte]

Take the old harddrive to your local computer tech person and have them attempt the transfer for you. If you arent sure how to do it then it is safer to have them do it for you.

Good Luck with it!!