I have used laptop giving a windows boot manager error message

United States
August 20, 2010 10:45am CST
I bought a used laptop on ebay. all the hardware is still there and it was as described as far as on the sellers end. I get here and the bios come on. It comes with the recover disc and even the micrsoft authentication for microsoft and all that. He's been the only owner of this one so I have all the paper work. I went through and changed the bios for it load from the dvdrom and it gives me this "Windows failed to start. a recent hardware change might be the cause to fix the problem:" Then you go through steps 1-3 and I do that but when it comes up to ask me for the language it doesn't get that far. I have the recovery disc and I actually have a new windows vista dvd rom for a completely upgraded OS. at the the bottom of the message it gives Info: Ramdisk device cration failed due to insufficient memory. I rebuilt my computer but laptops are different. I know the basic components and the inforamtion about partitioning the files for vista because I had to partition my old one where it had windows xp but system crashed and i had to install new hard drive and new OS. I've spent most of the day yesterday looking into the problem on microsoft and find the error but don't find the exact error in what mine is doing. can someone help me. I'm not stupid on networking and software. I just need to know what direction to go in. It pulls up the bios and it's reading both disc otherwise the information wouldn't come up like it does.
1 person likes this
2 responses
@sunilpaul (173)
• India
20 Aug 10
Faulty RAM maybe the cause for this error....If you know what that means you could go further in finding out how to test your RAM....let me know if you are familiar...in order to help you in this matter
1 person likes this
• United States
20 Aug 10
is there a way to fix. i ran the pass test on it and ikt past
• United Kingdom
7 Sep 10
Hello cryson, what version of windows do you have on the laptop at the present time? Is it vista? You say you have the recovery disk and you also have a new vista dvd rom? Is it this disk that you have tried booting from in order to install windows vista from scratch? I think the best option is to just reinstall windows vista from scratch using the new disk that you have. This could be a memory problem! Do you know how much memory the laptop has in full i.e. 1gb, 2gb? I'm just wondering if your laptop is meeting the minimum system requirements for windows vista. I just want to ask as well, why did you change the bios to boot first from the cd rom? Were you unable to load windows via the hard drive? Sorry, few questions, just process of investigation. Anyway, I'm happy to try and help you if I can. Andrew
• United States
7 Sep 10
I was told that the hard drive was the issue. so i changed it out. When I pulled it out. I found out it was 20gb. Which should have been way more than enough. I went to put a 4gb back in it and my cd rom holder fell out in the process. So i can't even load anything from it right now. so here's what happened. i was told that all this laptop needed was an OS on it. Or atleast that was what they thought. I got it here at home and the dvd wouldn't load. the bios would load and it kept coming and sending a message saying it was not reading it that there was enough ram. So I figured it was a bad hard drive. I changed it out and i still get nothing. I think I might be way over my head. The cd recovery that I have is for windows me which was on the laptop. The cd rom I have is vista. I thought I could just load vista and add the partitions and be done. but that has not been the case.
1 person likes this
• United Kingdom
7 Sep 10
Hi Cryson, wow, windows me? That is definitely an old operating system. Chances are your laptop specs are not compatible with windows vista. If your laptop had windows me on it then it's definitely an old laptop. As far as I'm aware you cannot upgrade from windows me straight to windows vista. You have to upgrade to windows xp and then from xp to vista. I think that you are having major problems with this laptop and it sounds to me like you are better off purchasing a new laptop with a warranty and just keep on renewing the warranty. I never purchase used laptops myself, that's not to say that they are all bad. The fact that you have now lost your cd rom tray, that creates a major problem. I really wish you the best of luck. That's what my advice would be now, to purchase a new or refurbished laptop. I'm in the process of building a computer from scratch myself and I'm buying the parts from the following website www.ebuyer.com I think it's well worth you checking this website out for computer deals. Andrew