Cant resurrect system

[Tony]

Returned from holiday to find I can't boot my XP system. Examination with
another OS booted from CD shows that everything in the Windows directory has
disappeared!

When I try to start over with my original XP disk, the system gets as far as
"Loading Windows", with a brief flash of the Windows graphics screen, then
crashes with a blue screen "Windows has closed down to save your computer
from destruction", or words to that effect.

My Partition Magic floppies load, then hang with the hourglass centre stage.

I guess I need to reformat the hard disk, but how?

Tony

 

[S. Taylor]

Get a friend, who uses windows make a startup diskette for you.
Once created, make sure the diskette is write protected.
Go into your bios and change your boot options so it will only boot from the
floppy drive.
Boot with the startup diskette.
When the boot menu appears, choose to boot with cd-rom support or without.
Once booted, type in this command fdisk.exe
Choose the menu options that let you delete the partitions and follow the
onscreen
instructions that lead you thru the process.
Once EVERY Partition, on EVERY drive has been deleted, reboot from the
diskette, again.
Once rebooted use fdisk again to recreate the boot partion and create a
logical drive when
prompted to do so.
To keep this process simple, if you're not familar with this process, then
just create 1 partition that uses 100% of the drive.
Reboot again, when done.
Now type Format C:
When done, type fdisk /mbr (just to be safe)
Then type sys A: C:

Remove the diskette from the drive and reboot.
Change the bios to boot from the cd-rom.
You should be to install xp now.

 

[Tony]

Many Thanks

Tony

 

[Guest]

I removed the hard drive from stalled computer, placing it in a functioning
computer. Made it a slave drive, and could read all the files. Off-loaded
as many important data files as I felt I needed, then cleared Windows folder,
so there was nothing in it. Replaced hard drive back into stalled computer,
started, and in the boot sequence it asked if I wanted to install an
operating system, since it could find nothing in the Windows folder. Said
yes, and installed XP. All other files and disk partitions were left intact.
Program shortcuts were lost, so you have those to reconnect, or can
reinstall software, as well as adjust your custom settings.