When you are faced with a computer being turned off ‘dirty’, which means simply that you didn’t shut it down properly, you could be surprised what simple fix may lay ahead for you.

The situation is simple, you were at the computer playing XYZ Part II and the computer locked up, with the only fix being to turn it off by holding in the power button. After the horror of that happening, you turn the computer back on, hoping to kill more bad guys, when you find that the computer doesn’t get past the Windows XP logo, or if it does, it just goes to a black screen.

Most people are panicked at this point, and I even know techs that never even think of running the standard chkdsk with Windows XP, since even Safe Mode can be borked as well. The simple fix to remember is to get out your Official Windows XP CDROM. If you have a dell, it’s going to be a Blue or a Purple disk that says “Operating system”.

There is however a few things to remember:

1. If anything tells you that you are going to format your drive STOP.
2. If you are told you will loose data, STOP.

So the general idea here is that the rotating metal platter in your computer has a problem, and you need to replace it with a spinning plastic disc, called a CD. Your computer can boot (or start) off of a CD, and that CD can provide you with the tools you need to get the computer started back up again to your lovely Jessica Alba background.

Now, back to the task at hand.

If you have your XP operating system disc in your hand, put it in your top CD-ROM and restart your computer. All that matters really here is that the CD is in the computer from the time you turn on the computer, and I know that means you must put the disc in, just power off and on to ensure it’s in the computer from the start.

Once that has occurred, most computers are setup to BOOT off the CD first, then the Hard Drive which is not usefull at this point. If you have a Windows XP Operating System disc in the CDROM one of two things will occur if the computer is trying or did successfully boot off the CD:

1. You will see a “Press any cd to boot from CD” (Press any key now)
2. You will see a nice blue screen that talks about loading in all sorts of files
If you don’t see either one of those things, then you should try one of these tips:

1. If you have a Dell, press F12 when the Dell logo shows up after you press your power button.
2. If you don’t have a Dell, try pressing F8,F11 one after the other right after you turn computer on.
3. If those don’t work try pressing ‘Esc’

If those tips work, you should be presented with a screen that asks about “Boot Selection”. In any case, you should see something about a DVD/CD/CDRW drive, so select the first one and press Enter. (This is why we put the CD in the first CD/DVD Drive)

Now, you have a nice blue screen that after several minutes shows up at a prompt asking you what you want to do. The important task here is that you press ‘R’ for recovery console. After a few more minutes it will ask you to type a number that corresponds to which Windows installation you wish to repair.

If you were a tech pro, you’d have more than one windows installed. Since you need help, I’d say the #1 option is best, and it should say: 1. C:\Windows. Press 1 and Enter if it says to.
Any other questions about layout of keyboards, etc should be ignored in most cases. It will probably after this ask you for your Administrator password. Most users can just press Enter at this prompt!
When you get to the point finally that you are looking at a black screen with a blinking prompt (or not), you can type in: chkdsk /p (that’s a space between the k and the /). Sit back and wait for a while, and eventually it will tell you if you had errors, and fix them. It may take 20-30 minutes depending on the problems, and the size of your hard drive.

After you deduce it’s finished, you can type exit (then enter), and the computer will restart. Take the CD out of your drive as quickly that you can and see if your windows now boots.

I’ve found that taking these steps will solve at least 1/2 of the computer problems out there, and if this tutorial gets popular, I will add screen shots.