someone there has to know XP recovery DOS shell

[Guest]

Got a problem
I was loading the driver from the manuf. disk to my DVDRW after doing a fresh install of XP (the 7th time I have done this due to erratic reboots/fatal errors/ and programs shutting down-I believe this to be caused by faulty memory i.e. either motherboard, RAM, AGP, or hard drive - I recently (3 months now) replaced my motherboard (ASUS A7N8X2.0 and CPU AMD XP 2700+ and RAM corsair, 2 512 MB) so it makes it rather difficult to determine if I have recently added hardware to find the problem- I keep running the scan disk upon your next reboot (I went through that twice last night, which takes about 40 minutes to complete, but it has not detected any errors as of yet-I still have hope) when I put the disk in, I put it in the CDRW instead of the DVDRW, so I removed the disk and put it in the DVDRW to continue, but of course I got an error message instructing me to put a disk back into the CD drive, I selected cancel, it came right back up, I cancelled, again 5 times it would not go away (instead of putting the disk back in like a person with some PC experience) I decided just to reboot as I didn't want any of the driver information to be put on the wrong drive (it was late and I was frustrated) so I clicked start>shutdown>restart, but it disappeared before I could make my selection so then (again-it was late I was frustrated) I hit ctrl-alt-del and used the task mgr to (no, not end task) shutdown/restart. Then the fun truly began, and when my PC booted back up, windows appeared to try to load (the scroll from left to right) but then instead of my desktop, all I could see on the screen was the mouse cursor (which I could move) but a black back ground and no PC activity. After approx. 30 secs, my PC rebooted. This loop continued 4 or 5 times. Then I tried to hit F8 while windows was loading, to start in safe mode or even last good settings, windows did not respond at all. I then inserted my XP CD and wanted to repair, windows said the HD was corrupted and wanted to format. I then tried the recovery DOS shell option. I ran chkdsk and it was successful, then tried bootcfg /rebuild, but got an error that advised I had to run chkdsk successfully first-hmmmmmmmm...... I tried bootcfg /add and it warned me it was going to use the default area I said ok. Then I tried to reboot and it brought up the login box asking for my pw -I don't have one so then I hit enter and I rec'd approx 50 error messages which advised me windows could not save to the location so pick another, but my only option was "ok". I clicked many times and then.......drum roll please........a black screen a mouse cursor and 30 secs a reboot and again and again. At that point I had work a 10 hr day in 4 hrs so here I am at work using my break time to write. Please help or at least provide some direction toward help. I paid MS $40 about a month ago for help, but after 14 hrs on the phone over a weeks time, they couldn't help me with my original problem. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance

Sorry, I can't help you. When things get as fugged up as you describe, I reforma
and reinstall the OS

 

[D.Currie]

Got a problem-
I was loading the driver from the manuf. disk to my DVDRW after doing a

fresh install of XP (the 7th time I have done this due to erratic
reboots/fatal errors/ and programs shutting down-I believe this to be caused
by faulty memory i.e. either motherboard, RAM, AGP, or hard drive - I
recently (3 months now) replaced my motherboard (ASUS A7N8X2.0 and CPU AMD
XP 2700+ and RAM corsair, 2 512 MB) so it makes it rather difficult to
determine if I have recently added hardware to find the problem- I keep
running the scan disk upon your next reboot (I went through that twice last
night, which takes about 40 minutes to complete, but it has not detected any
errors as of yet-I still have hope) when I put the disk in, I put it in the
CDRW instead of the DVDRW, so I removed the disk and put it in the DVDRW to
continue, but of course I got an error message instructing me to put a disk
back into the CD drive, I selected cancel, it came right back up, I
cancelled, again 5 times it would not go away (instead of putting the disk
back in like a person with some PC experience) I decided just to reboot as I
didn't want any of the driver information to be put on the wrong drive (it
was late and I was frustrated) so I clicked start>shutdown>restart, but it
disappeared before I could make my selection so then (again-it was late I
was frustrated) I hit ctrl-alt-del and used the task mgr to (no, not end
task) shutdown/restart. Then the fun truly began, and when my PC booted back
up, windows appeared to try to load (the scroll from left to right) but then
instead of my desktop, all I could see on the screen was the mouse cursor
(which I could move) but a black back ground and no PC activity. After
approx. 30 secs, my PC rebooted. This loop continued 4 or 5 times. Then I
tried to hit F8 while windows was loading, to start in safe mode or even
last good settings, windows did not respond at all. I then inserted my XP CD
and wanted to repair, windows said the HD was corrupted and wanted to
format. I then tried the recovery DOS shell option. I ran chkdsk and it was
successful, then tried bootcfg /rebuild, but got an error that advised I had
to run chkdsk successfully first-hmmmmmmmm...... I tried bootcfg /add and it
warned me it was going to use the default area I said ok. Then I tried to
reboot and it brought up the login box asking for my pw -I don't have one so
then I hit enter and I rec'd approx 50 error messages which advised me
windows could not save to the location so pick another, but my only option
was "ok". I clicked many times and then.......drum roll please........a
black screen a mouse cursor and 30 secs a reboot and again and again. At
that point I had work a 10 hr day in 4 hrs so here I am at work using my
break time to write. Please help or at least provide some direction toward
help. I paid MS $40 about a month ago for help, but after 14 hrs on the
phone over a weeks time, they couldn't help me with my original problem. Any
assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Sorry, I can't help you. When things get as fugged up as you describe, I reformat
and reinstall the OS.

programs, jokes, emails, key codes, personal docs down to the bone, equal to
about 20 gigs. I do not want to lose the last three years of my life and
thousands of dollars simply because I removed a disk while it was being
read. When I use chkdsk, it does show thw 20 g's still there and it does
recognize them as windows. It is just the boot and maybe dir that is the
prob. There has to be someone who knows what to do in the recovery DOS
shell-please forward to an expert. If I cannot recover this dir/HD, can I at
least recover the files?If a repair install doesn't work, the easiest way to save the files it to
put the drive in another computer and copy the files to CD.

It's probably fixable, but not the type of thing that could be described
step by step. More like a hands-on, try something, see the result, try
another. But without being there to see what's happening at each step, it
would be next to impossible to try to talk someone through it.