Ah! July the warmest month of the year.
Let's say that everybody goes on vacation. When you leave you leave your PC open to download your favourite movie. BUT when you return OMG! the PC won't enter Windows!
What am I doing now?
Call the technician: No, he is on vacation.
Send back the PC to the company where you bought it? No, I need it tomorrow.
So Formatting the disk is the only thing left.
Before your PC is damaged like that do a back-up every month, or every day if your profession is PC-based.
Always keep your Windows copy near. Also make a DVD with your essentials programs.
Then you should be able to do a tough job on your own.
May this article never be useful to you...
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The PC won't enter Windows? What's the error? Maybe a power failure to your Electric Company's grid resulted in hard disk failure. That's the worst case and in most cases cannot be overcomed by a format (and of course your disk will never again be dependable).
Here are a few tips from me...
* Install a fresh copy of your OS on your computer.
* Install all essential drivers and programs up to point you are ready from work.
* Use a cool Disk-Imaging Software (like Acronis True Image) to take a snapshot (or image) of your hard disk and store it in a couple of DVDs. That way if anything goes wrong, instead of formating your disk and doing everything by hand you will restore your system to the best point possible: a clean install with everything set (programs, settings, icons, etc).
So if you restore you will only lose user data (which can be moved to another disk PRIOR to this procedure using a boot disk or boot CDROM - recommend Hiren's Boot CD).
The thing is that I consider format (or restore) the LAST (and I mean THE LAST) resort.
Steps to do when something fails:
1) Collect as much info you can about the problem.
2) Google it (if you have a second computer) or ask a friend.
3) If the OS boots and makes it to the desktop you may use a third-party utility to fix the damage (e.g. registry errors, DLL reconstruction, disk defragmenting, virus detection and removal).
4) If the OS fails at a prior stage you should use Windows Restore. It is a great utility (not everything is Windows ir wrong and evil) that restores vital OS settings to snapshots taken in the past while the PC was still working. It has saved my ass numerous times.
P.S.: Another idea, applied by admins supporting Corporations, is to take a snapshot (aka image) of the hard disk just before formatting or restoring. That way you have an exact copy of the user's data and nothing is lost. Desktop Icons and settings may be restored using a Windows Wizard set for this purpose. Program Settings may be copied from the image to the fresh installation so that you don't have to reconfigure your programs. Finally documents and other files won't be lost for ever.
P.S.2: Always Always Always have at least two disk partitions. Use C for your OS and program files and D (aka second partition) for user files (My Documents, Downloads, MP3s, etc.) so that a format/restore won't affect these files. This is an excellent tactic since such data may occupy hunders for GB and therefore is very hard (and time consuming) to backup.
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