my computer boots up but as its doing its regualar startup it goes to the blue screen of death. it wont let me start in safe mode or regular mode. how do i fix it? Also, the electricity keep going out in my home and after that time my computer began giving me this message:

We apologize for the inconvience but Windows could not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change may have caused this. If your computer stop responding unexpectingly or was automatically shut down to protect your files and folders choose last known good configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked.

Gabriel, July 2004

Blue screen = no more pc

John, June 2007

if your computer is amd based it could be memory or cpu problem you can test your memory with microscope also check that your cpu is not overheating.if its intel cpu then memory could be at fault.if amd cpu check that your cpu has a new thermal pad and not paste.

jason, December 2005

If you're getting the
"We apologize for the inconvience but Windows could not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change may have caused this. If your computer stop responding unexpectingly or was automatically shut down to protect your files and folders choose last known good configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked."
message (as I all too often do). Pop in your Windows XP boot disk and rune a chkdsk in the recovery console. Works every time :)

mrshll, June 2005

Blue screens normally occur because of a fault with hardware, drivers or conflicting memory. As your machine does not start up at all it eliminates the memory. As you cannot get into safe mode, that means that it is not a driver problem as the majority of drivers will not load up in safe mode. Things that we need to know first of all. Have you recently installed any new hardware in your machine. If you have installed any hardware then the first step is to remove it as it is most likely that causing the problem.

The final thing that it could be is that you mentioned that you are having power spikes in your house. Power spikes can cause the power supply to blow, which isn't the case. However they can also cause the motherboard to blow, hard drive to corrupt, and basically anything else on the machine to screw up. The most likely offender is normally the hard drive, because when the power goes the read/write heads lose magnetism and drop on the disks which can scratch them to pieces.

You might need to get somebody to look at the PC to try and find out what bit is faulty and when it is fixed, might be worth installing an extension cable or plug with surge protection to prevent this from happening again.

Hope this is just new hardware that you can just remove.

Vang, July 2004