Windows 2003 "repair" installation from CD?

[Thogek]

Okay, I hate feeling stupid. And OS/boot issues make me feel stupid.

Well, that hasn't changed. :-(

The Windows 2003 Server still greeted attempts to boot with a blank
black screen, so I used the Windows 2003 Server CD to run a "repair"
install on that partition. This repair worked, and afterwords I was
able to boot into the Windows 2003 Server partition without problem,
with all data files and installed programs intact.

I'm having another issue with my Windows 2003 now, in a completely
different case. After I installed some new RAM (a seemingly simple
operation), my Windows 2003 Server partition again became inexplicably
unbootable, while my Windows XP partition seems fine, and boot.ini
behavior seems normal. A checkdisk on my Windows 2003 partition from
the XP OS scrolled a long series of messages about fixing corrupted
files, but the Windows 2003 OS still won't boot.

Seems like a good candidate case to run the Windows 2003 "repair"
install again, just as I did last time around.

However, this time I'm not seeing the option on the installation CD's
menus. I see options to drop the partition, or to do a fresh new
install, or to start the Recovery Console (which gives me a
command-line interface that I don't know what to do with), but nothing
about a simple "repair" installation option (which I *know* I used last
time).

Last time, what I found and ran was called something like a "repair"
install, executed a lot like a regular install, but simply repaired my
current Windows 2003 install (by restoring lost/corrupted files, etc.)
rather than overwriting a new one. (This restored my OS without my
having to reinstall all my software, reconfigure accounts, etc.) Now I
simply can't find that option. Maybe I'm somehow overstressing and
missing it...

Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and might be able to point my
clueless self in the right direction?

Thanks.

- Tom Kiefer
thogek @ earthlink . net

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

Suggestion: I would be posting this in one of the many Server Groups, as
this is a XP group. Although they may look similar, there are differences
and many of the components found in Win2k3 Server are not present in WinXP,
a desktop OS.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

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