Hey guys,

I recently SUFFERED a problem with my Acer Travelmate laptop. This is a 4-5 year old laptop and I've never experienced this issue before. I arrived home a couple days ago and as I was checking my email, I get a BLUE screen that said something like "begin memory dump" and it restarted itself.

Now, I expected to be able to get to the window which lets me choose whether to choose safe mode, normal mode or last known working configuration. However, all the computer does now is when I turn it off and back on, is show the acer screen and right after that, a blank black sceen with a blinking underscore at the top left.

I've tried to get to safe mode by pressing f8 but it does not get me anywhere.

Forgive me for my lack of computer knowledge but I hope someone can help me. I do not have a windows xp cd or recovery cd but I am looking for one at the moment.

windows xp
acer travelmate 4000LCI
40 gig hd
256 ram

TIA!This does not sound like a window's problem mate but a SYSTEM problem. I'm no expert mate but windows will always GIVE you a command prompt even when it's failed. It sounds more like a BIOS failure or some such. You say you have no command prompts when you boot your laptop up? Just a flashing cursor? This will sound stupid but have you got a dvd/cd in the drive when you try to boot? or a memory stick/memory card? The computer will automatically try and boot from a recovery disk if one is in your drive even if it is not one. Let me know..Hey Mulreay,

Thanks for the reply.

I am worried that might be the case. I have gotten ahold of a XP cd and am going to reinstall windows on it. Should I do that first or should I try repairing using Recovery Console?

I should add that I don't want to lose some important data I have and if repairing using the recovery console does that, please let me know!!

ThanksCould be the CMOS battery...just a couple of bucks for the battery.Have you backed up before the problem started? What kind of files are you trying to save?Hey guys,

I tried to reinstall windows xp (I should add the harddrive is partitioned to 20gigs each [c: and d:]). As I tried to do this, I noticed that c: is completely empty whereas d: had 700 megs or so remaining. In short, it wouldn't let me install xp onto c:.

So does this mean the harddrive is done? If so, would I be able to recover what is still in d:? Should I try to formatting the partitioned c: and see if installing xp on it will work?

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! You understand that re-installing Windows will wipe all your data ...? ?
Be that as it may if C:\ is empty why would Windows not install there ?
More info including the entire error messages you are getting.Mate it sounds like you need to re-install windows. If you have no back-up you will lose all your data though. But if you can't access it now then.. whats the difference. You will lose EVERYTHING though mate.But if my drives are partitioned, wouldn't the data in d: be safe?
Sounds like the hard drive is dead.

RUN hard drive diagnostics
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287I think that is the case too
How do I run that if I can't get into Windows?You use it to create a bootable floppy/CD...