As a new member, let me say, I have searched the forum for a solution to my problem, and discovered many great ideas, but none have fixed my problem.
I'm running Win 7 Home Premium on a home built desktop with an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe MB, and an AMD processor. It only has a single 160g HD. Automatic updates are turned on, and it has AVAST IS for virus protection.
Here's the problem. I came home from work the other day and the computer was frozen up, so I had to hit the reset button to reboot. When it came back up, it would get as far as the "starting windows" screen, then everything would go black and non responsive.
I've tried to use the repair console, and it keeps telling me it cannot start the repair tool, and it will not go back to a known time through system restore. For some reason, I cannot get it to "safe mode" either.
This morning, I placed the Win 7 CD in it hoping to repair it that way. For some reason It cannot find my installation of Win 7. It keeps telling me the only image of Win 7 is on the "D" drive. I do not have a "D" drive. When I attempted to load drivers (hoping to atleast get into safe mode), I found it apparently thinks I have 3 drives in the computer. "C" drive is now listed as System Reserved (with 70.3 mb free of 99.9mb), "D" is now called Local Disk (with 110 gb free of 148 gb) and something called "X" drive listed as Boot (with 28.9 mb free of 31.3 mb). My CD drive has been relisted as "E" drive, and shows that I have the Win 7 CD in it.
How do I fix this ?
In theory, I guess I could just do a complete wipe and reinstall (but not really sure how to do that with things the way they are). However, I do hae a few important things (like emails and favorites) that I REALLY need to get off if I could. Besides, it was a NIGHTMARE getting the OS installed the first time. It took almost 3 days on the phone with microsoft to get this thing running. I REALLY do not want to repeat that experience if possible.
PLEASE help !!!