Hang on Repair

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Schmitt
  • Start date Start date
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Bill Schmitt

I posted this earlier in the General group before I saw
this group, which is probably more appropriate.

I'm having difficulty repairing an XP Home machine with
NTFS. On boot, I'm told that the System file is corrupt.
Booting from the CD and choosing repair, I get a prompt
to choose the XP directory. There's only one, correctly
listed, which I select. After that, nothing happens.
If I try again and choose Install, the systems proceeds
to installation, and then the message appears on the
screen that it is searching for existing Windows
installations. After that, nothing happens. If I can get
through to the OS, I have a system level back from about
a month ago that can get me most of where I need to go,
but I can't get that far. Can anyone suggest how I can
get Windows back to the point where I can sed the drive?
 
Does it say the system hive is corrupt or the system file? If its the
registry hive you can reboot into recovery console, rename the system hive
in windows\system32\config and then copy in the one from windows\repair and
you may be able to boot the machine.
 
It says the system file, and I haven't been able to get
into the recovery console....
 
If you did a backup of the file system and put that copy somewhere else on
that same HDD, then you can recover the damged WinXP as follows using a
"rescue" computer, which must have a good working WinNT*/2000/XP OS:

1) Remove the HDD containing the damaged WinXP from the computer.
2) Connect it to the Seconary Master channel of the rescue computer.
3) Before booting up the rescue computer, go into that computer's BIOS CMOS
setup utility and set the Secondary Master detection mode to AUTO; not LBA;
not NORMAL; not LARGE.
4) Boot up the rescue computer and copy-paste the backup file for system to
the path Windows/system32/config.
5) Shut down the rescue computer.
6) Reconnect the HDD of the repaired WinXP OS to the computer that it
belongs in.

* WinNT is suitable as the rescuing OS so long as there is no encryption
applied to the system32 directory or the directory where the backed up copy
of system is located.

Precautions
-------------

You must become at the same "ground" potential as the computers in order to
avoid damage to their components during handling. With power switched off
(but not disconnected) touch your finger to the computer's metal chassis so
that your body becomes at the same ground as the computer. *After* you are
grounded equally to the computer, then disconnect the 3-prong power cord. If
you do that with the first computer, then it's not necessary to repeat that
for the 2nd computer.

Alternative Recovery Method
------------------------------

Obtain NTFS-DOS from www.winternals.com. Boot up the computer with a
NTFS-DOS boot diskette in the floppy disk drive and use DOS command
copy
to replace the faulty system file with the backed up copy. Then reboot your
repaired computer normally.
 
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