/ I can’t access the Internet – I’m unable to get past the welcome screen.

I can’t access the Internet – I’m unable to get past the welcome screen.

Kat Delong I’m a little unclear about whether it is just the Internet that is affected, or whether your entire system is hanging at startup. It sounds like your computer won’t boot, which is why you can’t get past the welcome screen and then get onto the Internet.

This is a fairly common problem, and is often caused by a virus. Because we don’t know the cause, you’re going to have to troubleshoot some possible solutions. Luckily, most of the fixes are fairly easy to do.

Safe Mode

Starting a computer in Safe Mode just means that it starts up with as few components as possible, thereby minimizing the chances that it will come across the problem. Once you’re into Safe Mode, you can use System Restore to roll your computer back to a time where it was working well, hopefully bypassing any viruses and then working to eliminate them.

Turn on your computer and immediately press F8 to get into Safe Mode (most computers use F8 - if that doesn’t work, try F1 or F10). You will then see the Safe Mode welcome screen that is just black with some white words on it - nothing fancy. Once you are in Safe Mode, look for the Windows Advanced Options Menu. From here, you can choose Last Known Good Configuration to roll the computer back to a time when it was working. You will see the Start menu and then be directed to select your operating system. You may need to enter an administrative password. If you don’t have one, just leave it blank and press Enter and see if that works for you. At this point, Windows should restart and hopefully get to a point where Windows will load normally.

System Restore in Safe Mode

You can also use System Restore to get your computer back to a time where it was working well. Get into Safe Mode as you did above. When you see the prompt type in %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe. You will then be asked to choose a restore point - pick a date just before the computer stopped working for you. The computer will run through its process and reboot, hopefully restoring Windows to a normal operation.

Repair CD

You can also restore the computer from the original Windows Repair Disk that came with your operating system. Insert the CD into the drive and you will see the Welcome to Setup screen. You will see several options - do not press R to repair the system. If you do, you will lose your data. Rather then pressing R, press Enter. The setup will start and then you will select the system to be repaired. The computer should run through its programs and then let you log in normally. If you can get the computer to this point, you will need to go to the Microsoft website and download all of the service packs and updates that have been lost since you purchased the computer.

If none of this works and you can’t get your computer up and running, you can still get your data by removing the hard drive and either using it as a slave in a working PC or put it in an external hard drive enclosure. After that, you can run the repair from the Windows CD - you will have saved your data to another place and you can then bring the system back to the state it was in when it was brand new. In any case, make sure you run good antivirus and antimalware programs to get rid of anything that may be causing this problem on your computer.

If I’ve gotten this completely wrong and you simply can’t access the Internet, let us know and we can give you additional suggestions. Using System Restore may help with that issue as well.