Hieroglyphics..... and a black screen

[YeloBlammo]

The piece of card board may have been referring to a recovery partition, a lot of laptops have those. If you press like F10 or F8 when booting the console will come up and ask if you want to restore. Otherwise you can legally download a copy of Windows XP (with whatever service pack your authentication sticker specifies, probly sp2) since you don't have one handy and just reinstall from that, get drivers from Dell website. Just use your own serial (which would be on that sticker, located on the underside of your laptop) and you're gravy.

No, it says on it my computer doesnt come w/ an OS CD beacuse I can use sytem restor or norton ghost.
I can't access the web through safemode on the computer

 

[Jorsoft]

So access it on another computer, download, and burn the iso to cd. Then pop the disc into your laptop and install with your legal serial number.

 

[YeloBlammo]

do you have more info on copying the 'initial partition' from the bios to start over fresh?
Does what I said make sense?

 

[KSoD]

Hello,

What do you mean copy the inital parition from the BIOS? You can copy anything from the BIOS.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[YeloBlammo]

Hello,

What do you mean copy the inital parition from the BIOS? You can copy anything from the BIOS.

Cheers,
Mak

I was mentioning to my friend about my issue and he was telling me that typically when you buy a computer is has the initial setup saved in its own partition. You can copy that and basically 'start over' just like you got the computer when you bought it.
Supposedly differnent than re-installing the OS because you do not have to go through all the set-ups.
He wasn't sure about this since he hadn't done it before but he mentioned to research it.
Does this sound correct at all?

 

[Jables18OSxxx]

Hey i'm not sure if i can help but i have had the same situation happen to me, a few weeks back on Vista i had IE open (IE sucks and FireFox been stuffing up) i had a few tabs open in that, and had iTunes running and update running on Trend Micro, and that was about it.

I was waiting for a page to load and was almost falling asleep (i have 28kbps dialup lol) then thats when the black screen you descibed popped up and the hardware was running pretty hard cause i heard all the cicking the hardware usually makes (i hope it does), and it was unusually loud and the fan was going nuts too... i tried waking it up by pressing keys and ctrl alt delete but it wouldnt respond or do anything else but show a black screen and alien like language, i couldnt stay awake to work it out so i did a hard shut off and left it.

I rebooted it the next day and it started up normally and had no history of that error that just happened... i tried looking at log files and the basic stuff like that but it hadnt recorded any such thing, and i just look in the event viewer and look around in there... and the internet history in IE was wiped too...

my laptop has had two blue screens and now this and i'm just a little concerned that my laptop is degrading itself and maybe i'm degrading it.

one thing i'd like to finally find out is how to find what these problems were and how to fix them.

Sorry for not helping, i just had the same problem that you have had and thouhgt i should post my similar problem here too.

 

[KSoD]

I was mentioning to my friend about my issue and he was telling me that typically when you buy a computer is has the initial setup saved in its own partition. You can copy that and basically 'start over' just like you got the computer when you bought it.
Supposedly differnent than re-installing the OS because you do not have to go through all the set-ups.
He wasn't sure about this since he hadn't done it before but he mentioned to research it.
Does this sound correct at all?

Hello,

What that is in reference to is the Recovery Partition. That is used with some Windows XP Machines but mainly with machiens with Windows Vista.

To check and see if you have a Recovery Partition hit F12 right after the BIOS Flash screen goes off screen and that will tell you if youhave that option available.

What Operating System do you have? Only then can we give steps to making things work.

Cheers,
Mak

 

[KurrentEweser]

He said a few years old. I doubt it would be Vista. Call Dell and ask for a replacement recovery CD.

 

[YeloBlammo]

XP, Media Center 2005

i believe

i hit F12 last night to poke around but don't recall seeing that. I'll check again tonight now i know what i'm looking for.

 

[YeloBlammo]

F12

my options are:

inforn ?? ( i cant read it because of all the letters jumbling)
CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Onboard NIC

Bios Setup
Diagnostics