Recovery console won't run from CD

[Guest]

I had a recent problem where the Windows XP recovery console wouldn’t run
from the original installation CD. The details:

The computer is a Dell, which came with Windows XP Home installed. I
upgraded this to Windows XP Pro, and had had no problems. After updating
video drivers (ATI), the computer wouldn’t reboot. None of the boot options
(safe mode, last known good configuration, etc.) worked. I tried to do
automatic recovery from either the XP Pro or Home CD’s, neither recognized
the partition on the hard drive. Recovery console wouldn’t even start from
the XP Pro CD. Recovery console would start from the XP Home CD, but would
crash and reboot if asked to actually do something. The problem was resolved
when I removed the hard disk and connected to another XP computer. This
computer ran checkdisk on the bad drive, found and fixed problems. When put
back in the original computer, the system booted up and ran OK.

The question is, can anyone tell me why the recovery console wouldn’t run
from the XP CD? Running checkdisk from the recovery console would have
solved my problems, but I couldn’t run recovery console. Without the other
XP computer, I would have been screwed.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Buzz Doyle

 

[Steve N.]

I had a recent problem where the Windows XP recovery console wouldn’t run
from the original installation CD. The details:

The computer is a Dell, which came with Windows XP Home installed. I
upgraded this to Windows XP Pro, and had had no problems. After updating
video drivers (ATI), the computer wouldn’t reboot. None of the boot options
(safe mode, last known good configuration, etc.) worked. I tried to do
automatic recovery from either the XP Pro or Home CD’s, neither recognized
the partition on the hard drive. Recovery console wouldn’t even start from
the XP Pro CD. Recovery console would start from the XP Home CD, but would
crash and reboot if asked to actually do something. The problem was resolved
when I removed the hard disk and connected to another XP computer. This
computer ran checkdisk on the bad drive, found and fixed problems. When put
back in the original computer, the system booted up and ran OK.

The question is, can anyone tell me why the recovery console wouldn’t run
from the XP CD? Running checkdisk from the recovery console would have
solved my problems, but I couldn’t run recovery console. Without the other
XP computer, I would have been screwed.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Buzz Doyle

Recovery Console has to be able to access the file system on the hard
drive and login to the the Windows installation there. The file system
errors on the drive were apparently preventing this.

Steve

 

[DSL-Dave]

Recovery Console has to be able to access the file system on the hard
drive and login to the the Windows installation there. The file system
errors on the drive were apparently preventing this.

Steve

If the problem was with the hard drive, then why would it work on a
different computer???
Am I missing something???

Dave

 

[Steve N.]

If the problem was with the hard drive, then why would it work on a
different computer???
Am I missing something???

Dave

He didn't boot the drive with the FS errors in the other XP system, he
connected it as an additional drive and ran CHKDSK on it from that
installation of XP.

Steve

 

[Guest]

I guess my file system problems were pretty serious. Thanks for the input.

Buzz

 

[Steve N.]

I guess my file system problems were pretty serious. Thanks for the input.

Buzz

I'm glad it is working for you now. I've seen FS problems result in all
sorts of wierd things. Some of the FS problems weren't necessarily all
that serious either, just in places where serious system files were located.

Steve

 

[Alex Nichol]

Recovery Console has to be able to access the file system on the hard
drive and login to the the Windows installation there. The file system
errors on the drive were apparently preventing this.

It does not need to actually login, if run from a CD (as for example it
will run to restore boot.ini without which the existing install cannot
be accessed). But it *does* need to be able to do a basic read of the
hard disk to discover a file system on it.

 

[Steve N.]

Steve N. wrote:




It does not need to actually login, if run from a CD (as for example it
will run to restore boot.ini without which the existing install cannot
be accessed). But it *does* need to be able to do a basic read of the
hard disk to discover a file system on it.

Every time I have ever booted the XP CD and pressed R to enter Recovery
Console I am presented with choosing the installation of Windows by
pressing the number key that corresponds to the location of Windows,
after that point the only option I've ever seen is to enter the password
for the Administrator account. I've presumed that without logging in as
Administrator there is nothing further one can do. What other options
are there at that point?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[Alex Nichol]

Every time I have ever booted the XP CD and pressed R to enter Recovery
Console I am presented with choosing the installation of Windows by
pressing the number key that corresponds to the location of Windows,
after that point the only option I've ever seen is to enter the password
for the Administrator account. I've presumed that without logging in as
Administrator there is nothing further one can do. What other options
are there at that point?

Yes - but if you cannot access boot.ini, and hence find out about the
different systems (which you would need to if wanting say to use COPY
within the Windir of one), you can still boot the R option from the CD,
and use it for things like rebuilding the boot.ini or copying say ntldr
direct from CD to C:. And it appears that the OP could not even get to
that stage