PC will not boot. Please help

[brendymegs]

When I turn on my PC it will not boot. I get a blue screen with the following error message.
File name: Ios(05) + 00001EDI
Error: OE:0028:C02C29AD

I am able to boot to safe mode. I have tried system restore to restore to a previous point (3 times) and it will not restore.

I can't access the CD-ROM drive while in safe mode, nor will my PC boot from a CD (even after changing the BIOS boot order)

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers
Karen

[Murray S.]

Howdy and welcome to CTH:

Couple things you can try..

First, blue screens usually indicate a problem with loading some device or software. Chances are the problem is with some Memory Resident program listed in either the Autoexec.bat or config.sys files.

Boot up into safe mode and rename both these files to autoexec.bat.bak and config.sys.bak and reboot.

ME does not need either file to run. Older 16 bit programs use them.
If that doesn't work, if you do the following, a WinME boot floppy should let you restore your Registry

1: Make sure BIOS is set to boot to the a: drive (Floppy) as the first boot device.

2:Put the floppy in and start up pc.

3:You should get 3 options - choose the option to start computer without cd-rom support.

4: When you get to a:\> Prompt, type "cd c:" (no quotes) then press enter

5: Now type "cd windows\command" (no quotes) then press enter again

6: Now, type in "scanreg.exe /restore" and enetr

If all went well you should get a restore screen. Just choose a date to restore it to; remove floppy and restart.

If you don't have a WinME bootfloppy, you can get the files from www.bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com/).. Download it and then run it to install the files to a clean formatted floppy disc.
The system may start up in Safe Mode after this fix.. If it does, just reboot and it should start normally.

Murray

[brendymegs]

Murray,

Thanks for the welcome, and the advice. Unfortunately it didn't work. Nothing will let me restore. It looks like my only option is to reinstall but as my husband :leonardo: has data on the disk he hasn't backed up I can't even do that yet. :dizzy:

I have another hard drive and connected my 'broken' hard drive as a slave to retrieve the data but I would still like to fix this drive without a complete reinstallation if possible. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
Karen