WIndows wont boot ...pls help

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kennylegend

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Hi there...
trying to sort my sister-in-laws laptop for her but not having much joy.

basically, windows wont start up at all. The acer logo appears on screen with the 'hit f2 to enter set up' message but then goes blank with just the cursor flashing at the top left hand corner of the screen.

Ive taken out the HDD and connected it to my own pc with a usb adapter and can access the files on it. Im assuming from this that the HDD is ok.

Ive scanned the HDD using malware bytes anti-malware and it DID find 2 trojans. I had hoped this would be the problem but it still wouldnt boot.

Its got 4Gb of RAM ....I swapped around the ram sticks and tried booting without either stick but still no joy.

So at this stage, herres where im at:

Im fairly sure its not virus related, the HDD is ok and the RAM is ok.
Its an acer machine running WIn Vista, 4Gb Ram and 500 Gb HDD.
Id really appreciate any help here before i turn it into a shop.

thanks,
ken.
 
Have you tried booting to a livecd like ubuntu? Can you get into the bios screens?

This will show if you have hardware or software/hdd issues.

Its odd that the bios splash shows up, but not Vista.

Welcome to tf btw.
 
I think something corrupted in the OS's boot process. Since you can access her data, back it up to your computer. Does she have a recovery CD, that came with her laptop?
 
thanks for the reply guys.

I can get into the bios set up from the splash screen but she has no recovery cd.
Acer uses a partition on the drive where you can acess the recovery disk and restore to factory settings but i cant access that either.

I have her her data backed up since last night.
I could re-install windows from a cd but i dont have one.

Great forum by the way !!!!!
 
So am i right in saying, if i boot to ubuntu live cd and run a few tasks with this, that most likely the hardware is ok and that it is probably a problem with the boot sector of windows??
 
ok...i downloaded ubuntu and the installer to a usb stick and changed the bios boot sequenceto boot from usb key but still no boot. just a flashing cursor on a black screen after the splash screen.

Hmmm...
 
ok got ubuntu running from my usb stick.....well i got as far as the installation screen anyway before i quit.
i must try get a hdd checker so next.
 
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