Monday, June 17, 2002		Article

There is hope after crash
Vipul Verma

FOR computer users certain five-letter words could spell nightmare. Consider these five-letter words for example, "crash" and "virus". Are these not horrifying words? They could give tremors to any computer user as they mean serious danger to your computer and especially to the precious data stored on it.

No computer, however, is virus proof or crash proof and every computer has a potential risk of crashing under certain circumstance. But that should not make you hit the panic button, since crashes mostly give you an opportunity to recover provided you adopt the right strategy.

If one fine morning you switch on your computer and find that the screen goes blank or the Windows logo does not come up, then the best strategy is take your hands off and sit back for a while to decide your course of action, rather than getting frantic over the possibility of data loss. The first and most basic rule of surviving a crash is not to let yourself get unnerved.

A blank screen of failure to boot does not necessarily mean that you have lost all your data. In a majority of the cases, this problem gets resolved easily by taking certain steps. Remember that your hard disk is one of the most rugged and long-lasting components, after the processor in terms of average life.

The next thing after calming down is to switch off the computer and switch it on again. At times this alone could solve the problem; this happens for the primary reason that at times a loose connection or power disruption may be the cause. However, if restarting the computer does not help, then move logically to the next step of checking all connectors of your computer, which also includes the power connection. Check the power cable to ensure it is rightly plugged into the electricity point and also well connected to the SMPS. Try taking out the power cable and inserting it back, this could also help. Then open the outer cover of the computer and check all the power connectors coming from SMPS to the motherboard and hardware components like floppy, CD-ROM and hard disk. If any of these connections were loose, then also your computer would not start. Also check the surge protector or the UPS to make sure it hasn't blown a fuse or been destroyed by a voltage spike. Check if the brightness and contrast settings on your monitor haven't been turned all the way down, as even in that case nothing would be displayed on your monitor.

If all this fails to boot your system properly, then you should try to look for clues, which are normally provided by the problem itself. For example, when your PC starts up, you should hear the power-supply fan rev up. You should also hear your hard disk spinning. If all is quiet on the hardware front, you may have a bad power supply. However, if you hear a series of beeps before your system hangs up, note their number and whether the beeps are long or short. This audio error signal from your system's BIOS provides information about a problem it detects. In this case you may have to enter the BIOS setup to detect the problem, which could be non-detection of hard disk or even failure of some device at the time of boot-up. The best solution in this case is to load the failsafe defaults in the BIOS feature setup. Another possible clue that you may get is that when your PC starts it runs a "Power-On Self Test" that confirms the presence of such essential hardware components as memory chips, video cards, and hard drives. If the system reports any error message, note it down to know of the component that might be causing the problem. The BIOS setup is essential in troubleshooting before the Windows starts loading as it loads the computer and its parts. Therefore, loading the default setting may cure the problem in most cases, though in the case of the hard disk, you may have to detect the problem either under automatic mode or manual mode.

However, if your system crosses all these hurdles and the problem occurs in loading Windows, then you have a reason to smile as this means your disk is partially functioning and your data is safe.

Now try starting the system in the safe mode as by doing that you bypass the non-essential programs and functions, which might be causing the failure in loading, because under the safe mode the Windows is launched with a minimum set of drivers. If this solves your problem, and Windows loads successfully, then you should run scandisk and restart the system. If Widows loads successfully, you are through. If the problem persists, then you should load Windows step by step by pressing F8 before Windows loads. This will give you the option of step-by-step confirmation. Choose this option and hunt down the errant driver or program.

There could also be a situation where you may get a "Boot disk failure" or "Operating system not found" error instead of a "Starting Windows 9x" message, your PC can't load Windows from the hard disk. This error may indicate a damaged drive/cluster and in this case you would be required to boot from a bootable floppy. This process bypasses the hard drive and confirms that your computer is otherwise healthy. Use the Windows start-up disk that came with your system. If you don't have a start-up disk, it's a good idea to make one before you need it. Thus, after booting from the floppy, you should type C: followed by "Enter" since the system would be booted to A:. If the system changes to C: and after changing to the Windows directory, the system starts loading, then it would mean a problem in the cluster, where the critical information is loaded. In this case you may have to reload the windows. However, if after booting from the floppy, the drive does not change to C:, then this means either your hard disk is not detected or the logic card of the hard drive is corrupted. In this case you can at best auto detect or manually detect the hard disk. If the hard disk is detected then there is no problem and your system would be restored. But if the hard disk is not detected in the BIOS, then you may need to consult a hard ware expert. This process can help you survive a crash and in most cases could help you recover from the crash.