So what do you do if your Windows Vista machine decides one day it wont boot?

Note – this article is a brief look at some options, if your computer will not boot – we can fix it and do all this hard work for you for just £35, just give us a call on 078912 847 465 or visit our main website

First things first, if your not at that point of  ‘Oh dear, its not working’ (Or similar!) yet – BACKUP! and create a recovery CD/DVD (Detailed how to guide)

Vista, like Windows XP has a recovery console (a place where it will try to fix itself from most common faults), and its far more useful then ever before. This is a quick guide for how to access it -

Check your Manuals for custom recovery options from your PC Supplier

• If you are at a stage where your computer wont go into windows, but does turn on its a good idea to check with your original PC manuals about a recovery partition or recovery mode specific to your make and model, for example Acers are ALT + F10
  • Remember though, that most system restores from the manufacturer actually wipe away all your settings  so unless they say restore without losing documents, its best to access the recovery console as set out below.

Accessing the recovery console

• If you cant find the details for your PC recovery settings, or don’t want to perform a restore and have all your data wiped then pressing F8 just before the Vista loading screen (the one with the green bar) appears should load a new menu, you should see a option called Repair My Computer
• If you don’t have this option, but do have either a recovery disk, an OEM Vista Disk or a Retail Vista Disk you will need to ‘boot*’ from that and select Repair my Computer from the bottom left of the ‘Install’ Screen (after selecting your language)

*Booting from a disk means you will need to know how to get into the BIOS and change the Boot order on some machines - a guide is available for this

Once in the recovery console you will be presented with a screen like this:

• Run the start up repair first, as this sorts most ‘common’ issues out.
• If that doesn’t work, the System Restore may let you restore to an earlier time.

If none of these work, unfortunately a reformat is the best option. If you don’t fancy the sound of that – which many people don’t - why not let us take care of it? We also test all the hard drives as well to make sure there is no bigger issue causing the corruption, and 99% of the time we can recover all your data.