On Fri, 05 May 2017 21:46:34 +1000, Lucifer Morningstar
wrote:

On Fri, 05 May 2017 13:06:52 +0300, Micky wrote:

A winXP question, but a serious one, so I'm asking for help from
v10-hotshots too.

My Acer Netbook (about 8 to 10 years old, model not remembered but on
request) has been working fine, except for the usual Firefox too many
tabs problem. This time I closed Windows normally and the next time I
tried to boot it, 10 or 15 minutes went by and nothing showed on the
screen. Nothing on the screen when I started, in the middle, or when
I got tired and turned the computer off.

Turned it off with the power button, and on restart, it did nothing
again, for 10 or 15 minutes. Much of the time the harddrive light was
on steadily. Sometimes it flickered and then went back to steady.

On the third try it started, but took much longer than normal, and it
displayed nothing along the way until the very end it displayed a blue
screen with a couple horizontal bars and Windows is Starting.

It's hard to believe but at the start it didn't even display the
startup options to go into the BIOS, etc.

But everything worked fine once it did start. After 8 hours of use,
the web browser (SeaMonkey) was slowing down, so I restarted it.

Same problems. Finally started on 3rd try, but took 10 minute to do
so. Working fine again.

What is the problem? What to do? I'm on vacation and if the whole
thing fails, I don't have equipment to "fix it" or even salvage data
from the HDD.)

Thanks for any help you can offer.

I suggest trying to boot from CD or USB drive.

It has no CD drive, though at home I have a USB CD drive that came
with it (via ebay) but it's not something I'd travel with.

I should have made the USB boot drive, but didn't, but I don't see the
opening messages anyhow. I guess I coudl ask here what Acer uses to
get into Boot Order and the BIOS, and try that key even when nothing
is displayed on the screen. (I'll have to see if the progress bar
for coming out of hibertnation displays. I know it did on my desktop
XP. I know they don't on win10, or Vista and I don't like it. You
can't tell if you're making progress.)

If that works maybe do a chkdsk on the internal hard drive.
A repair reinstall will refresh XP without changing any settings.

Have to wait until I'm home, in 3 weeks.

On my last trip, 9 years ago, for 8 weeks, I broke the entire computer
with about 4 days to go.. I went to someone I barely knew and either
I or he dl'd some repair medium for me, and I think I used that, and
after that, I think it was, I spent literally 2 days running chkdsk
until it was time for the plane to leave, and it still wasnt' done.

When I got home, I got it working, but a few days later, while I was
looking at a file manager, I saw the files start disappearing, 5 or 10
files per second. I had a copy of everything, and I bought another
3" HDD but didn't load it right for booting, and then I decided the
whole thing was old, WinME, upgreaded from 98SE..

How I broke the computer. I bought a bag of pistachios, and ate the
ones I could open. 5 or 10 were not open enough for me to get my
fingernail in, so I put one under the very flat bottom of the Thinkpad
and pressed down. First, the shell is so strong that could never have
worked. Second, the nut went shooting across the room. I heard it
hit the back wall but never found it. The computer worked fine for
the rest of the session, bedcause everything was in RAM, and I should
have never turned it off, but it wouldn't start the next day.
(because as you know, but some of my email recipients might not, the
"tone arm" of the hard drive bounced up and down on the platter,
ruining one or both of them.)