I have a packard bell imedia 5069, when i turn the pc on i get the message " we apologise for any inconvience, but windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this."
If your computer stopped responding, restarted unexpectedly, or was automoatically shut down to protect your files and folders, choose last known good configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked.
If a previous startup attempt was interrupted due to a power failure or because the power or reset button was pressed, or if you aren't sure what caused the problem, choose start windows normally.

well i have tried every option it says, it tries to start windows but i only get to the black screen with the windows logo and loading bar on then it returns to the above window after switching itself off first.

This is my daughters computer and as far as i am aware, she said that when the wire leading from harddrive to monitor was knocked the computer would switch off. She does not know where any of the recovery disks are either arghhh. Any suggestions would be really appreciated

Stressed mother, May 2005

Basically from what it sounds of it, this PC has a bad hard drive- an internal component in the PC. This component proberly needs replacing and then windows re-installed. Now some packard bells have built in recovery, this is usually f9/f10/f11 keys pressed on startup of the PC. Then this invokes the recovery or re-installation of the factory software. If this PC is under warrenty call the relavent helpline, if not try the built in recovery mehtod if you dont have the CD's supplied with the computer. If it fails to go through the motions or gets stuck then it may well the a bad hard drive as mentioned above. Good luck.

Pc xpert, May 2005

thanks colonel blinky, we found recovery disk after turning her room upside down, all is well now and i have even managed to network all the computers, chuffed with myself as i'm not that up on computers :)

not so stressed mother, May 2005

Obviously you've got some damaged system files. You need to boot the PC from a Windows XP disk (or the recovery disk supplied with it), and follow the options to either repair the installation, or install over the top of it (hopefully you won't lose any data). So... you need to dig out those CDs!

Colonel Blinky, May 2005