Computer hangs on login screen

Hi,

We have an old computer at work that hasn't been used in about 9 months. Anyway, went to use it the other day, and it powered up fine, a little slow but it is old, but after I got entered the details on the login screen then nothing. It just hangs there and won't load past this. Its an IBM computer running Windows 2000 professional.

There is a program on this computer we need at work but can't get access to till we get logged in, and nobody took a backup of the data as the computer wasn't in use much. Smart I know, but its not on the network and was really just forgot about.

Anybody got any ideas on how to get around this. Can I boot from a floppy disk or something, although I don' think its a boot problem as if it was I prob wouldn't get to the login screen.

Many thanks in advance!

Try logging in to safe mode. Maybe that'll be easier.

If all else fails, you can always stick in in another PC as a second harddisk. Should work unless the harddisk is damaged.

Sticking the hard disk from the original PC in another one is not guaranteed to allow you to run the application in question whatever about being able to access/backup the data associated with it.

It's impossible to tell from this remove and with such limited information what is causing the booting/login problem.

sabre Man said:

Try logging in to safe mode. Maybe that'll be easier.

If all else fails, you can always stick in in another PC as a second harddisk. Should work unless the harddisk is damaged.

Click to expand...

I'd try safe mode.

Try a live unix OS CD (one the doesn't install anything). If that boots it means there isn't a hardware problem. If there is you could swap parts till you find the hardware thats failing. But be warned once you start messing with old hard lots of parts can fail that worked fine for years.

Swap the disk only as a last resort.