Hi there! well, last week, a really good friend of mine (I want her to be my girlfriend) said her notebook computer suddenly "died", and Windows didn't start up, so she handed it to me and I took a good look at it. It's an IBM thinkpad A20m with 64 RAM, I told her it was probably a memory problem, so I took out one memory card from my laptop (same model) and installed it on her computer. It worked fine, Windows started up and I could work with the cmoputer. Yesterday, I took her computer to some computer "pros" to see if they had compatible memory modules, they took some from a Toshiba computer and installed it on the Thinkpad, they said it was compatible, but now, Windows didn't start up. The windows folder had ASCII characters in it's name, so the computer couldn't find the necessary files to load Windows. I created a boot disk, ran Scandisk and some folders had invalid characters, surface scan ok, FAT ok, and file system ok. Oh, the HD volume was also messed up. I want to know how I can recover the info she had in her computer, what could've been the cause of the problem and if it will work again if I reformat the HD. It was running with Win 98
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Windows doesn't start = missing or corrupted files
- Thread starter Bobdelira
- Start date
rclarke250
Technical User
Most of the times I have seen ASCII characters as folder names and in file names,It's been a Virus....As for the memory,In the A series from IBM any standard sdram SO dimm will work pc100 or pc133...It is possible that the Toshiba ram will not work. I have a T series IBM and a Toshiba 8200 and the memory from the Toshiba will not work in the IBM. Hope this helps.
Well, it definitely sounds like there's more to it than just a memory problem (possible virus infection). Bad memory by itself does not corrupt files. I guess the obvious test would be to place your memory back in the laptop and see if the errors go away.
If not, then make sure you install an up-to-date antivirus scanner and run a full system scan, along with running these applications which look for unwanted spyware:
- HijackThis
- Spybot 1.2
- Ad-aware 6
* Note: All 3 can be downloaded from
~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
If not, then make sure you install an up-to-date antivirus scanner and run a full system scan, along with running these applications which look for unwanted spyware:
- HijackThis
- Spybot 1.2
- Ad-aware 6
* Note: All 3 can be downloaded from
~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
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