Boot to DOS with XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave
  • Start date Start date
D

Dave

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, upon which I dropped a
large heavy object (not on purpose). As a result, I can no longer boot from
the hard drive.

When I boot from the XP installation CD, and select Recovery Console, I can
see at least some of my files at the C: prompt. However, my attempts to
repair the hard drive have been unsuccessful.

Is it possible to boot from floppy or CD, like the old DOS prompt? And if
so, am I likely to find DOS-based drivers that would allow me to copy
whatever I can salvage to my CD/RW?

I'm guessing that the file system is NTFS.

Thanks.
Dave.
 
You cannot boot into DOS because there is no DOS to
boot into with Windows XP. In your situation, consider
looking into a professional hard drive recovery firm.

Some references:

http://www.dtidata.com/

http://www.datarecovery.net/

http://www.harddriverecovery.org/emergency_tips.html

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------


| I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, upon which I dropped a
| large heavy object (not on purpose). As a result, I can no longer boot from
| the hard drive.
|
| When I boot from the XP installation CD, and select Recovery Console, I can
| see at least some of my files at the C: prompt. However, my attempts to
| repair the hard drive have been unsuccessful.
|
| Is it possible to boot from floppy or CD, like the old DOS prompt? And if
| so, am I likely to find DOS-based drivers that would allow me to copy
| whatever I can salvage to my CD/RW?
|
| I'm guessing that the file system is NTFS.
|
| Thanks.
| Dave.
 
Dave said:
I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, upon which I dropped a
large heavy object (not on purpose). As a result, I can no longer boot from
the hard drive.

When I boot from the XP installation CD, and select Recovery Console, I can
see at least some of my files at the C: prompt. However, my attempts to
repair the hard drive have been unsuccessful.

Is it possible to boot from floppy or CD, like the old DOS prompt? And if
so, am I likely to find DOS-based drivers that would allow me to copy
whatever I can salvage to my CD/RW?

I'm guessing that the file system is NTFS.
Click to expand...

Try booting from the CD and doing a Repair Install as per the
instrucctions at http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

That will preserve your installed applications, user data files, and
program configuration settings.

Another recovery procedure that I have used involves using a Windows
98 boot disk configured to create a very large RAM disk, plus a DOS
utility that can read NTFS files and copy them.

The procedure involves copying the desired files to the RAM disk until
it is full then using PKZIP to copy the contents of the RAM disk to
multiple diskettes. I use a 16 mb RAM disk when I do this, and it
works quite well for document files and some small data files. It
does not work at all for files larger than 16 mb.

Post a response back here if you want detailed instructions regarding
this second procedure.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
You can make a boot floppy from another XP machine that may boot the box.

Format a floppy in GUI mode, dont quick format
Copy NTLDR, ntdetect.com and boot.ini to the floppy
Try to boot the machine from that
 
Try booting from the CD and doing a Repair Install as per the
instrucctions at http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

That will preserve your installed applications, user data files, and
program configuration settings.

Another recovery procedure that I have used involves using a Windows
98 boot disk configured to create a very large RAM disk, plus a DOS
utility that can read NTFS files and copy them.

The procedure involves copying the desired files to the RAM disk until
it is full then using PKZIP to copy the contents of the RAM disk to
multiple diskettes. I use a 16 mb RAM disk when I do this, and it
works quite well for document files and some small data files. It
does not work at all for files larger than 16 mb.
Click to expand...

Ron, I tried the Repair, and starting getting some undesirable noises from
the hard drive, so I stopped.

The Win 98 trick looks useful. If you have it handy, I'd like to see the
details.

Thanks!

Dave
 
Ron, I tried the Repair, and starting getting some undesirable noises from
the hard drive, so I stopped.

The Win 98 trick looks useful. If you have it handy, I'd like to see the
details.
Click to expand...

Here goes.

The boot disk that I use is actually a DOS network startup disk that I
found at www.bootdisk.com

I modified it to increase the size of the RAM disk to 16 mb. I did
not modify the autoexec.bat file on the disk to eliminate the DOS
network setup. I just boot with it as is and ignore the network
detection and setup parts. Then I delete the network related file
from the RAM disk so as to free up a bit more space.

I then copy PKZIP.EXE to the ram disk and create a folder named FILES
on the ram disk to hold what I find.

Then I run READNTFS.EXE a free utility from
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm which allows you to browse through an
NTFS disk and to copy files from it to a FAT32 drive. I copy
whatever files I want to the \FILES folder on the ram disk.

When the ram disk is full or when I have found all that I need I close
READNTFS and run PKZIP to compress all of data from the \FILES folder
in the ram disk to 3.5 inch diskettes.

Because I do not use this procedure very often (twice in the past
year) I have not bothered to modify the boot disks so as to speed up
the process etc. Perhaps some day I will, probably the next time I
need to use it.

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
Ron, the NTFS utility works great, and it appears many of my files are
intact.

I might be getting greedy, but do you suppose it's possible to get either:

- a DOS-based CD-RW driver, or
- a DOS-based network boot disk

that would allow me to copy larger files out to CD, or my other computer?

Thanks again!

Dave.
 
Dave said:
Ron, the NTFS utility works great, and it appears many of my files are
intact.

I might be getting greedy, but do you suppose it's possible to get either:

- a DOS-based CD-RW driver, or
- a DOS-based network boot disk

that would allow me to copy larger files out to CD, or my other computer?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Check with http://www.bootdisk.com for DOS boot disks with network
support.

As for CDRW drive support from DOS about the only one that I am aware
of is Image for DOS from http://www.bootitng.com which can create a
disk image from DOS but that is not going to work for what you want.

How about a parallel port ZIP drive? A bit expensive but they do work
from DOS and they hold 100 mb per cartridge.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
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