Restart failure

[Guest]

The last weeks I have been affected by the following problem: when I try to
restart my computer I get a message that the system could not restart from
previous location due to a read failure with the consequent "Delete
restoration data and proceed to system boot menu".
I have tried 3 different antivirus (AVG, ZoneAlarm and someone else) without
finding any virus, I ran Ad-ware (and removed every suspect file) and I ran
twice the disk restore (chkdsk /r). It seems to work OK inmediately after,
but after a while the problems are back (somethings the customer will shut
down by itself).

Before taking the drastic stage of rebooting the system from the CDs I would
like to know if this is my only option, if somebody can give me a hint about
what is causing the problem and if I need to take any steps in order to avoid
the problem in the future.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Boot to the XP setup CD, and press 'r' for recovery console, run the command : CHKDSK /R

 

[Guest]

I tried to do that earlier by I couldn't and I don't understand why. What
happened was that I couldn't get to the recovery console. When booting with
the CD I have to chose between (1) restoring XP and (2) going to a command
prompt line, I take the second one (my understanding is that the first one
will just proceed rewriting everything I have and I'll have to reinstall
everything again, right?). When I get to the command prompt line, "r" is not
recognized as a command but I can run CHKDSK although with option F (fix)
instead of R (options /F and /V are available). The problem is that all this
is done on a driver A:, and I haven't figured out how to make it run on
driver C: (I get a message that this driver is not recognized and I cannot do
CHDIR C: for instance). Driver A: seems to be some minor partition because it
is just 1.5Mb and no error is found there. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

I would guess that going to the BIOS setup would also show no hard drive. It may be dead.

bios setup access keys. Go to: http://michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

 

[Guest]

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean, would the hard drive be dead?
By restarting in safe mode I manage to get it running, shouldn't this be an
indication that it is not "that" dead?

Something else: when I tried to run chkdsk from Windows I got the message
that it was not possible because the version of the OS was different than the
one in the setup CD. Is this caused by having migrated to SP2? wouldn't I get
the same message if I manage to run the recovery console from the Setup CD?

One final question: from the DOS prompt (from the CD) which is the command
that would give me the list of drivers available (in addition of A:, which I
guess is the RAM) ?

Thanks a lot for your help (and patience)

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

You don't seem to understand the concept of the BIOS setup.

bios setup access keys. Go to: http://michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

 

[Guest]

You're right, and now is too late.

Thanks for your help.