Your computer will not boot: here's some help

Welcome to the home of love, where your computer gets to know of hugs. Take the time to give it love, to ensure the spine stands, on the test of time (until you update protection files again). For only you can operate the golden rule, do unto your computer, who knows who to fool. But we do outwit the slyest fox, when we give love instead of gloves (put them up, combative forces). The greatest part of protection is clear, the smooth operation of moving in space is dear (world wide web). Protect my computer God above to bring the Angels down below. Bless and bless the common place, to be rest assured that all is grace.

Hello Relatives,

First thing we need discuss is what is expected or hoped for from you and from me:

I love helping people with their computers, but you need to help as well.  Primarily, I need information about your computer: make, model and model number, operating system like Windows 7 or  Mac OS9.

With out this information, I might not be able to help.  So, this information is critical.

I am disabled and try to help people to help themselves by bringing to their attention what is already available. Like from Support on the manufacturer website or what is already on the computer in question like the Recovery partition (on HP computers F10 at bootup will invoke the Recovery software). I try to do everything FREE.

If I need to meet with you (in the San Francisco bay area, please) it will mean a donation to the church (supplies like gasoline, the price of a cup of coffee, SanDisk flash drive, or blank DVDs; things like that).

What did you hope to accomplish with our connecting?

Ok, shall we start?
Question: what operating system are you using to communicate with me right now?

The information I'm going to teach you will help you to rescue your computer(s).

Here's what we're going to do:
A. download Linux Mint operating system,
B. use MD5 SUM to verify the download integrity,
C. use Windows 7 or Windows 10 software to burn the bootable Linux Mint operating system onto DVD, or
D. use UNetbootin to burn a bootable Linux Mint to flash drive.
E. use Linux Mint as a not-installed operating system to retrieve your personal data and to completely erase (called a low level format) the hard drive for a clean install of Window 7 or Windows 10

F. after your computer(s) are up and running, feel free to Install Linux Mint. This will give the capability of having a backup operating system and is also fun to learn to use. Just boot to the Linux Mint DVD or flash drive and click Install Linux Mint on the desktop. During the installation, be sure you “install along side of the Windows system” that is detected. This is the only critical part of the installation: if you choose otherwise, you will wipe your Windows operating system off of the hard drive!


1. The person I wrote this procedure for was having problems when upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7.  I recommended a clean install (where the hard drive is wiped clean  with a low-level format, which I will instruct you on.

If you can recover to factory Windows 7 save all of your information to DVD or an external USB drive (the USB drive can be a flash drive or an external hard drive (what I do is buy a $40 500GB, 7200RPM hard drive and a case for it, $25 or less). You'll find her files under C:\user\name she is using to sign in; or you can backup using Windows 7 software.  I don't have Windows in front of me so try finding “backup” on the start menu.

2. On the Linux Mint, may I suggest the version 17.3 64 bit XFCE.  Be sure that you get the 64 bit version: it's twice as fast.
Here's the link: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=214.  Scroll down to one of USA mirrors, click on kernel.org or Linux Freedom (the ones I commonly use) and the download will start.
Problems you might have: If your source is one of poor download speed, or if you have troubles with the MD5 check sum (this happens when you have to restart the down-loader several times). You can bring or send me two 16GB flash drives (16GB SanDisk flash drive at Walmart for $8+tax) and I will set you up with 1 USB flash drive and 1 DVD both ready to install Linux Mint..

3. MD5 Check Sum:  at the top of the Linux Mint download page is a line where it says "Information about this edition" Look down to "MD5"  The number to the right is the sum of all bits of the download; sometimes called a check sum.  When you run MD5 Sum on the downloaded file and the numbers match, you have a good download.

Now go to your downloads folder; single-left-click on the file “linuxmint-17.3-xfce-64bit.iso” that you just downloaded. Single-right-click and look for MD5 sum, hash or something like that (might be on one of the tabs in Properties).  The MD5 sum software will do the calculation to see if the file check sum is the correct.

4. If when you right click on the downloaded file, you do not see MD5 Sum, you can easily download the software to do it.  http://implbits.com/products/hashtab/.  On the upper right corner of the webpage, click on Get Hash Tabs get it started.  They will send you a download link.  Look at the screen shots below the download box to learn more about how it works; it's very simple.

5. To burn the DVD, put a new, clean, unused DVD into the DVD drawer.
Using your Windows 7 software: open Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer).
Locate the Linux Mint file in Downloads. Single-left-click the desired file. At the top of the window that shows the files, you'll see “Burn DVD”  Click on that and it will burn the DVD for you.
For Windows 10, single-left-click the file, single-right-click and click on Open ISO Viewer. There is an icon at the top to “Burn the DVD”

6. To burn Linux Mint to flash drive I use: Unetbootin. So after you have downloaded your new Linux Mint 17.3 XFCE.iso and have verified that it is good with Hash Tabs, you'll need to burn it to memory stick/flash drive.  I use “Unetbootin” Download this from http://unetbootin.github.io/#install.
Looking at the screen shots on the UNetbootin website, you'll see that you can download the operating system from that program, but I've had troubles with it. So, just use it for burning the USB flash drive. Following the instructions on the UNetbootin website, you can easily create a bootable flash drive.

7. Now to teach you how to boot to the desired device, be it the DVD or USB flash drive.
When booting the computer, look carefully and quickly (doesn't last very long) to see which keys to use to access boot option or access to BIOS.  You can also look at your downloaded User Guide for this information.
Some computers will allow you to select boot option with the ESC key or access BIOS with F2 or F10. 
When you get into boot options, select booting to DVD or USB.  reboot and watch it happen.
If you need to get into BIOS, it's a little more difficult.  Please let me know if you have to select boot source from BIOS.  I can walk you through it.

8. How are you doing with all of this? Am I going too fast?  Not enough information or too much information, let me know.
To repeat, if this is too much, just bring me a couple (2) of 16GB flash drives (Walmart has 16GB SanDisk for $8+tax). I'll return to you a flash drive and a DVD both loaded with Linux Mint 17.3 XFCE.  You can use them for system data as mentioned or you can install Linux Mint along side another operating system (called Dual Boot).

All of it is easy and very useful. For example, with a crashed computer or a computer that will not boot, you can use your newly created Linux Mint DVD or flash drive to boot into the dead computer to retrieve your personal files. You can run the computer from the DVD/flash drive without installing it.

9. You can use the Windows 7 DVD or Linux Mint to gain access to the hard drive to get your personal information.  In Windows, the the main hard drive is C:, (in Linux it is dev/sda sometimes just sda)
From the Linux Mint start menu (lower left, just like Windows), find Accessories, single-left- click, find Disks and then single-right-click on Disks.

In the left pane, identify the hard drive by drive capacity/size and single-left-click to highlight it. On the right pane you will see that it is identified as /dev/sda
The gear-looking icon offers actions will give you the option to format. Click on the gear icon and click on Format. In the next box, use the arrow to select low-level format.NOTE: this will erase everything on the hard drive that you selected in the left pane.  You quit out of Linux Mint by clicking on the start icon, click on Logout and selecting Shut down

Now you can insert your Windows 7 DVD and perform a clean install. Your previous Windows system  is gone and will no longer affect your freshly installed Windows operating system!!
Wow, what do you think of all of this?

When we get your computer(s) working, there is a lot of good, useful computer aids on this blog.  Please look around.

Sincerely,
Holiness David Weekley

alightfromwithin.org