Hey there,

I know very little about computer maintenance, so please bear with me. Since yesterday, I've been experiencing issues with starting my hp pavilion ze5300 laptop with Windows XP os. Initially, I get the "hp" screen with "press esc to change boot order", etc. Then it goes to a black screen with white lettering saying "We're sorry for the inconvenience, the system did not shut down properly", etc. with selections for restarting at the bottom. I have tried several of the selections - start normally, start from last good session, safe mode, etc. Most of the selections get me as far as the "Resuming Windows" screen with the Windows logo, and then the screen goes black and stays that way. However, when I go to any of the Safe Mode starts, I get a weird message that stays on the screen. It goes like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\System 32\DRIVERS\pciide.sys

The part after Drivers changes for each line, and these lines of text take up pretty much the whole screen. I can't use any of the keys to do anything, all I can do at this point is shut the computer off manually and restart.
I don't think I have my Windows CD anymore, and I have data on the hard drive that I need to access. What are my options? Thanks in advance for the help!

Hello vcf07 and welcome to the forum
I've marked your thread as Open to encourage a response from the Techs and talented forum members amongst us..

Thanks for your patience

Please tell us exactly what you did before this error occurred please.

My husband was the last to use it. He had mainly just been playing (non-internet) games, but he does remember clicking on some Windows update (he can't remember what the update was for though). I shut the computer down on Thursday morning, and we began experiencing the problem the next time we went to turn it on. I'm sorry for the vagueness, but I don't know which update was selected.

When you select safe mode and get the writing on the screen this is normal and may be very slow but should in time load windows. But try this time selecting safe mode command prompt.

You will get a black screen in it
type C:\windows\system32\restore\rstrui.exe and press Enter

if your lucky it will give you system restorechoose restoreto an earlier time select a few days ago and see if that works

Ok,thanks for the reply. I have tried doing what you suggested. When I select Safe Mode with Command prompt, I get the message I mentioned before, the "multi(0)disk(0)..." etc. That message just stays on the screen, and there is no response from pushing any keys. It has been like that for over 30 minutes now... I don't think it's going to change. Any other suggestions?

If you cant get to safe mode or normal boot mode your options are limited. To get data off goto livecd from there yo can download live cd's free they boot an O/S from cd without touching your current system. They should all be able to see your drive and then you can copy the files off you need to a dvd or usb drive. Some are linux cd but its more or less the same as windows so you should be able to work it out.

The best one is Avast you have to sign up free to get it bu *** has Av as well so it maybe worth scanning the pc while you have it