Customer calls, saying both her computers won’t start (blue screen).

When I get there, the 1st PC would either give a blue screen, or display a blank screen.

I try a bartPE CD, but once it started, it couldn’t detect any hard drives (no C: etc)… disk manager showed 2 physical hard drives.

A memory test showed no faults.

After some checking, It seemed that the PC was setup by concorde computers, it was configured in a raid arrangement, but no raid driver disk had been supplied… Thats why the C: drive wasn’t visible…

And attempting an xp repair install didn’t work either (due to no raid drivers present).

At this stage, it was looking like a complicated process to recover everything, so I took a look at the second PC.

Apparently, it hadn’t been working for a few months. Sure enough, it just went through the bios display, then displayed a blank screen.

I try a live CD, and it boots correctly. and the memory tests out correctly.

I boot without the CD, and this time the PC boots normally 🙂

Just to make sure its not a ram / video card dust problem, I reseat all cards and RAM.

I reboot a few times without a problem.

At this point, customer decides to leave the first PC as is (she will try a few things).

So I leave it at that.

The customer later calls & says she somehow managed to reinstall XP… just that she couldn’t get to her mydocuments. Over the phone, I point her in the right direction, and thats that.

Some customers can be very resourceful if necessary!