Cannot boot up - how to reinstall

[Guest]

I have a Fujitsu laptop with preloaded XP home edition, I also have a
partition dump image of the C drive in another 2.5" drive. File system is
NTFS.
Due to unknown reason, my boot sector in my Laptop was wiped, the drive is
now shown as unformated (the NTFS indicator was wiped) therefore the drive
cannot boot up.

I tried to use my backup drive, but cannot boot up either, the symptom is
that after Windows XP home sign is displayed and the moving bar is displayed
for about 5 seconds, the screen turned black (no curser), the disk active
display on my laptop lighted for a second and then everything stays as is
(dark, no disk activity) for hours. There is no response to key board or
ctr-alt-del actions. I have to do a hard power off by hard pressing the
power button.
The next time, when I tried to boot up, the safe boot screen will come up,
to boot in Normal windows mode will give me the same symptom as above.
To boot in safe mode without any driver, the system display loading about 15
drivers and then stop (dead stop no disk activity)
I tried all mode of safe boot but encountered same symptom.

Questions:

1. Is there a way to log (or to see) driver loading to see where did it
stop? May be copying a similar driver (the one where it stopped and the one
after that) from my previous backup image may cure the problem.
Any one can suggest a better cure?

2. Is there a way to cure my wiped out disk? (My backup disk and the laptop
disk are of different size so a direct overlay of the boot image will not
work, I am thinking about calculating the address using the disk size, but am
not sure how to do it)

3. The restore CD that comes with the laptop can only restore the system to
the image when it was brand new. That means I have to reinstall everything I
did on my laptop for the past 2 years, for some of the programs I cannot find
the installation disk. Is there a way to install repair (to my backup)
without wiping out everything? I do not have other installation disk other
than the restore CD from Fujitsu, does it mean I have to purchase another
license from MS? Will the upgrade XP home version work, or it need to be a
full version? (Note I already have an OEM license and key)

Any suggestions or comments

 

[John John]

I have a Fujitsu laptop with preloaded XP home edition, I also have a
partition dump image of the C drive in another 2.5" drive. File system is
NTFS.
Due to unknown reason, my boot sector in my Laptop was wiped, the drive is
now shown as unformated (the NTFS indicator was wiped) therefore the drive
cannot boot up.

(sniped)

2. Is there a way to cure my wiped out disk? (My backup disk and the laptop
disk are of different size so a direct overlay of the boot image will not
work, I am thinking about calculating the address using the disk size, but am
not sure how to do it)

You might try using PtEdit and see if you can change the partition flag
back to NTFS. Boot the laptop with a Windows 98 boot disk and run
PtEdit from there.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/ptedit.zip

The 32-bit PtEdit version is here:
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

John

 

[Guest]

I have a Fujitsu laptop with preloaded XP home edition, I also have a
partition dump image of the C drive in another 2.5" drive. File system is
NTFS.
Due to unknown reason, my boot sector in my Laptop was wiped, the drive is
now shown as unformated (the NTFS indicator was wiped) therefore the drive
cannot boot up.

I tried to use my backup drive, but cannot boot up either, the symptom is
that after Windows XP home sign is displayed and the moving bar is displayed
for about 5 seconds, the screen turned black (no curser), the disk active
display on my laptop lighted for a second and then everything stays as is
(dark, no disk activity) for hours. There is no response to key board or
ctr-alt-del actions. I have to do a hard power off by hard pressing the
power button.
The next time, when I tried to boot up, the safe boot screen will come up,
to boot in Normal windows mode will give me the same symptom as above.
To boot in safe mode without any driver, the system display loading about 15
drivers and then stop (dead stop no disk activity)
I tried all mode of safe boot but encountered same symptom.

Questions:

1. Is there a way to log (or to see) driver loading to see where did it
stop? May be copying a similar driver (the one where it stopped and the one
after that) from my previous backup image may cure the problem.
Any one can suggest a better cure?

2. Is there a way to cure my wiped out disk? (My backup disk and the laptop
disk are of different size so a direct overlay of the boot image will not
work, I am thinking about calculating the address using the disk size, but am
not sure how to do it)

3. The restore CD that comes with the laptop can only restore the system to
the image when it was brand new. That means I have to reinstall everything I
did on my laptop for the past 2 years, for some of the programs I cannot find
the installation disk. Is there a way to install repair (to my backup)
without wiping out everything? I do not have other installation disk other
than the restore CD from Fujitsu, does it mean I have to purchase another
license from MS? Will the upgrade XP home version work, or it need to be a
full version? (Note I already have an OEM license and key)

Any suggestions or comments

Well, it sound to me your Built-in Video is damaged or corrupt completely,
it is hard with Laptop to tell the user Open this and undo this, Laptops
difficult than PC desktops.
If you have a valuable Data, best if you take it to a Data recovery
specialist to recover your data First, then you can consider next step,
Reinstall if the built-in Video not an issue or better if you got a new
Laptop!.
Did you tried last good configuration?.
HTH.
nass

 

[Guest]

It is not hardware. I tried the recovery CD from Fujisu (which wiped out all
my installed programs and data) and the raw XP home worked perfect. This is
not a hardware issue.

 

[Guest]

When is that? two years ago or recent?.

It is not hardware. I tried the recovery CD from Fujisu (which wiped out all
my installed programs and data) and the raw XP home worked perfect. This is
not a hardware issue.

 

[Guest]

John,
Thanks for the suggestion. I have checekd the boot sector with Acronis
disk editor and it has been wiped mostly with 00. It is not simply just
affecting the NTFS flag.
I do not have any experience using PtEdit, will it automatically calculate
disk locations using the different sizes in both the cloned disk and the
damaged disk?
Note I only have a cloned partition (backup) which does not boot either and
do not have any Norton ghost backup. (I also have the Norton systems work
2006 and Ghost 10 programs)

 

[Guest]

The crash was last week when I was travelling. The restore to original
factory condition and proof that it was not hardware was yesterday. I wiped
the restored to factory condition already because it required me to install
everything again.

 

[John John]

No, ptedit will not do that. There is a copy of the boot sector stored
at the end of the volume, it can be retrieved and copied back to the
correct boot sector location. If you want to try this see here:

Recovering NTFS Boot Sector on NTFS Partitions
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153973

Brain surgery or rocket science is nothing compared to the above
instructions ;-)

There are certainly other utilities that can do this in a much easier
manner but I can recommend any as such. Any good recovery software
should be able to find and copy the boot sector from the end of the
disk. If you can't do anything with the disk you may want to try to try
to copy the clone and try to get it to boot.

John

 

[Jim]

The crash was last week when I was travelling. The restore to original
factory condition and proof that it was not hardware was yesterday. I
wiped
the restored to factory condition already because it required me to
install
everything again.

Does you laptop have a repair partition or does it have a restore CD?

If it has a repair partition and if you you mean by "wiped the restored to
factory condition" that you
removed this partition, you shot yourself in the foot.

If in addition, you removed the restored to factory condition version of XP
from the OS partition, you have left yourself with few options.

You can try to get the vendor to send you a CD which will restore the
computer to factory condition.
At least this option will save you time because you will not need to install
the drivers for the custom hardware
that is now found on most laptops. You will still need to install all
programs that you have added since you
bought the computer.

You can also buy an XP CD and install XP on your computer. However, you
will still be left with the problem of
finding the drivers for the custom hardware. And you will need to install
all programs that you need.

You may find it less costly and certainly less time consuming to replace the
computer.

Jim

 

[Guest]

I am trying various options with the partition backups of both my crashed
disk and the "orginal" backups. I wipe off and recopy the partion after an
experiment which does not work but this does not affect the original copies.
I know what I am doing and I try not to shoot myself in the foot.

To answer your question, my laptop does not have a repair partition, it
comes with C and D and D is a backup of of the exfactory C and I have not
used D from day one (if D is the repair partion you are talking about).

I tried the CD from the vendor and it restores everything to the exfactory
condition (it does not have the repair install option and does not contain
the Recovery Console) and this is not what I want. I want to do a repair
install keeping all my files and programs like a version upgrade but the
vendor does not provide (or support) that option, and I do not have a retail
CD to do that. (To buy one means I am paying 2 licenses for XP on the same
computer)

I am now trying to download the 6 bootable set up diskette and see if it
works (as suggested by the tech support of the vendor, but I doubt it).

Another option is to upgrade to XP pro or Vista and pay for the upgrade. I
am not so worried about drivers, XP and Vista are quite smart on plug and
play, is that true?

Any more suggestions?