First I would like to apologize for the lengthy post.
I have a 4-5 year old HPG50-126NR laptop. I am running Windows Vista Home Basic, 32-bit, with Service Pack 2. Last week the power cord came out of the laptop while I was putting in on a chair and I did not realize this happened. At the time I had a window open in Firefox. Being the batter is fundamentally dead, when I returned after about 20 minutes, the computer was off.
I pluged the power cord back in and started up. When I went to open Firefox, it said "Couldn't Load XPCom". While I know nothing about computers, I figured Firefox got corrupted because of how the laptop shut down. I tried to uninstall Firefox, but it would not. Since I had Google Chrome as a back up, I downloaded Firefox over the existing version, figuring it would install whatever pieces that may have corrupted. Sure enough, Firefox was working again.
That night I shut down the laptop from the start button as I always do. In the morning I logged in fine and while the laptop tried to boot it would not. Through the prompts I was able to launch hp recovery manager (I do not remember how this happened many be through F11), I was able through the prompts to System Restore 2 days prior and then log in and boot up fine. I use AVG, Spybot and Glary Utilities religiously, and I know that I did not download anything to cause the problem. That said, there were 2 “important” Windows updates in the same general period. But it seems the problem happened because of the improper shut down.
Figuring the problem was resolved, I shut down that night. The next morning the same exact problem and somehow gain I found System Restore (I think through HP Recovery Manager) I was able to get to System Restore and go back 2 days prior, log in boot up again. It then became clear to me that beyond Firefox some others thing became corrupted, such as Windows Vista boot loader, because there was no problem at all once it booted.
For the past 3 or 4 days I kept the laptop on 24/7. It would go into rest mode, but all needed to do was log in and the icons populated and I used to laptop all day. This even included today, up until noon when the power went out for a few seconds and now I can't get it back up, regardless what I do!
I somehow was able to run Problems Signature and this is what it showed:
Problem Event Name : StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature 01: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6001.18000
Problem Signature 03: 4
Problem Signature 04: 196611
Problem Signature 05: NoRootCause
Problem Signature 06: NoRootCause
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 1
Problem Signature 09: SystemRestore
Problem Signature 10: 0
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Now even System Restore is not doing anything to get me going. I run it and after it shuts down and the laptop tries to boot, but I get an hp Recovery Manager pop up. Using it for System Restore is not doing me any good. Unfortunately, I do not have the Vista disc.
Would using the hp Recovery Manager to reset the laptop back 5 years do anything, or that would not address a corrupted Windows Vista boot loader?
Short of saying I got 4-5 years good years from the laptop and buying new one, is there anything that can be done? While I am technically challenged, I have a friend who is not. I would need to work with him over the telephone so I would need to get him in the church if there is anyway for him to walk me through this.
Thanks much.
Anovice