Hi all,

My Desktop won’t boot. My routine is that every day, I turn the machine on as soon as I get up. I make a cup of tea whilst its booting up & running through its self-testing, downloading Auto updates etc. It stays on then till I go to bed at 12:00 / 01:00.
Everything was O.K before this. I have not added or downloaded anything – as far as I know – apart from MS auto up-dates.

I turned it on this morning, & was initially bloody annoyed, cos I thought my new LG HDMI ISP monitor had failed. Its about 8 weeks old now, so I don’t think its anything to do with this problem.

It seemed that the machine was working, in that the red LED (power – I think) was on, but the green one wasn’t. I think this is the ‘reading files’ LED. There was nothing on the screen, but the on/off switch was lit, so I knew that at least it was powered.

As there was nothing on the screen, I couldn’t shutdown properly. I held the on/off button in, which used to force a shut-down with the previous M.B. This time it Re-Started. I don’t know if that’s usual with this asus kit, as its all pretty new.
Anyway, I watched what happened. It went through the usual routine, the Asus MB logo & list popped up,,,, a message from realtek popped up,,,, it got to ‘Starting Windows’,,,, but then went through it all again. I looked in the machine, but can’t see anything obvious. Everything seems to be running properly – everything is sitting straight & tight etc. I checked all cables & connections.

I had 99.9% ruled out a problem with the LG monitor, but after a few more tries, I attached my DVI one, ‘just in case’. I’m glad I did, as it brings up far more information when running through the boot up procedure.

It showed that I did have a problem with the innerds. It allowed me to boot in Safe Mode and I tried a System Restore to 7th Oct – to when all was well. It came back saying it couldn’t perform this. It offered a Repair run, which I accepted. That also came back with “can’t do owt – take it to a pro” (a bit thin on the ground in West Cornwall).

It won’t let me boot into Safe-Mode any more, just goes into ‘Startup Repair’ mode, which of course it can’t fix.

I have been running a Back-up routine on E: drive. It’s the first time I’ve tried a proper back-up thing, so not 100% certain if I’ve done it right.

I’m assuming that I should be able to boot via this ? If so – how, please ? When/if I get it running, I’ll need to find where the problem lies.
For the moment, it would be great to get it running – as usual, I am in the middle of a couple of important things – grrrr

Any ideas please ?