Install Help - System UNUSABLE

[glmason]

Please Help. I was setting up my new HTPC and Sage hung while doing a channel scan. It stuck on channel 69. I had to do a hard reboot. Ever since then Windows won't even load. I can't do anything! What can I do?

I'm sure you need more info but here is my system setup. I had just installed the tuner card. I had installed the firefly remote but had not used it. I had selected it as MCE under the Sage install as recommended by a user in the Sage Hardware forum. I'm using only an antenna to get all HD signals. For this setup I was not hooked up the the internet. It's in a temporary location, but I told it to not use an EPG so that shouldn't do anything. I get very strong HD signals on my Vizio 37" LCD which I am using at the Monitor for this HTPC.

All help will be appreciated.

Pentium Dual Core 2.86
Zalman CPU Cooler
2GB RAM
MSI NX7600GT Diamond Plus
VBOX 150 HD Tuner
480GB HD (80+200+200)
XP Home
Firefly remote
SageTV - hopefully

[MeInMaui]

I would try to boot the computer into safe mode (hold down F8 immediately after the bios screen). If you can do that, you can try disabling some drivers and see if that lets you boot normally. I'd start with your tuner drivers and then maybe remove the video driver if that doesn't work. I don't know if system restore works from safe mode, but you could look at that as well. Good luck.

Aloha,
Mike

[rickgillyon]

System Restore is available from Safe Mode.

Also it sounds like your HDD might have been damaged. Boot from your XP CD, run Recovery Console, and when it starts type CHKDSK C: /R

That should find and fix any disk problems.

[glmason]

Thanks for your help. Thankfully it was easy to solve. I did the F8 but it took me to a menu I'd never seen before - it let me choose which drive to boot from. From there I kept needed to keep holding down the F8 key (I hadn't done that before reading MeInMaui's response. When I did that it booted fine, actually not in safe mode , and it took me back into the Sage set up screen. I told it to not load on start up and the system has been working fine since then. I figure I'll make sure everything is working well before adding it back to start up.

I appreciate your quick responses.

Lucinda