Boot Disk Failure

[Guest]

Running XP. My daughter was doing her usual stuff on the computer and it
unexpectedly restarted. when it came back on it said system disk failure,
insert system disk and press enter. I put in the CD that came with the
computer and hit enter. I got press 1 for system restore and 2 to boot from
disk. I don't want to restore without trying to save some of her school
files, so I pressed 2 to see if I can get into the computer and back some
stuff up to a CD for her. However, when I press 2 it displays A:\> and
nothing else. I don't know what to do next. Restoring all of the original
software is okay, but I'd like to try to save some of the files. Is there
anything that I can do?

 

[Guest]

Firstly: what said 'system disk failure, insert system disk and press enter'
Was this a BIOS message or a Windows message?

If it was a BIOS message: power off the PC and restart, accessing BIOS and
perform an IDE device setup to search for and select the hard drive. If you
cannot identify the hard drive, then consider that it has been damaged
irrepairably!

If Windows cannot find certain boot files, then insert the XP Installation
CD [it is not the system disk], and boot from the CD.

Perform a repair installation to reconfigure XP. It will not affect other
applications that you have installed nor will it delete any personal files.

When the "Press any key to boot from CD" message appears on the screen,
press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD.

Note Your computer must be configured to start from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM
drive. For more information about how to configure your computer to start
from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, see your computer's documentation or
contact your computer manufacturer.

You receive the following message on the Welcome to Setup screen that
appears:
This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft Windows XP to run on
your computer:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.
Press ENTER to set up Windows XP.

On the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen, press F8 to agree to the
license agreement.

Make sure that your current installation of Windows XP is selected in the
box, and then press R to repair Windows XP.

After you repair Windows XP, you may have to reactivate your copy of Windows
XP.

 

[GTS]

Good information from BAR, but I would add a suggestion. If the drive is
recognizable in the BIOS, I strongly recommend running a chkdsk before
trying a repair install. To do this, if you have a standard XP CD, boot
from it to Recovery Console and run chkdsk /r If it identified bad
clusters the disk is starting to fail. You can also try running the
fixboot command from Recovery Console. Depending on the nature of file
damage that may be sufficient without a full repair reinstallation.

 

[Stickems.]

If it is only the recovery CD that you have then you cannot save any data.
If the disk has failed and is out of guarantee you will need to buy Windows
again.


| Running XP. My daughter was doing her usual stuff on the computer and it
| unexpectedly restarted. when it came back on it said system disk failure,
| insert system disk and press enter. I put in the CD that came with the
| computer and hit enter. I got press 1 for system restore and 2 to boot
from
| disk. I don't want to restore without trying to save some of her school
| files, so I pressed 2 to see if I can get into the computer and back some
| stuff up to a CD for her. However, when I press 2 it displays A:\> and
| nothing else. I don't know what to do next. Restoring all of the original
| software is okay, but I'd like to try to save some of the files. Is there
| anything that I can do?
|