Windows XP Won't Boot

[Guest]

My XP Pro computer won't boot. I get the following message after my computer
posts:

"Missing or corrupt file /windows/system32/config/system"

I have been running without problems for about 3 months and yesterday it
started doing this out of the blue. I have a Western Digital 80gb SATA drive
(WD800JD) and the VIA 6420 chipset. I know about the jumper 5 and 6 thing
from the Western Digital knowledge base.

When my computer posts, it recognizes my HDD and I ran some Western Digital
diagnostic software and it says there are no errors.

I ran the recovery console from the XP installation disk and chkdsk /R gives
the following message:

"The drive contains 1 or more unrecoverable errors"

from the c:\ prompt, if I try to change directories or do anything I get the
following message:

"There is no floppy disk or CD in the drive"

I also did a FIXMBR and that didn't help.

I have been running Norton antivirus (and updating it weekly) since I
installed XP so I don't think it would be a boot sector virus.

Is this drive toast? I can always do a clean install and restore from
backup blah, blah, blah, but what I am wondering is what caused this and
whether I should rely on this drive or use a different one.

Can I install XP on a new drive and connect to this one as a slave to
recover files.

 

[Anna]

My XP Pro computer won't boot. I get the following message after my
computer
posts:

"Missing or corrupt file /windows/system32/config/system"

I have been running without problems for about 3 months and yesterday it
started doing this out of the blue. I have a Western Digital 80gb SATA
drive
(WD800JD) and the VIA 6420 chipset. I know about the jumper 5 and 6 thing
from the Western Digital knowledge base.

When my computer posts, it recognizes my HDD and I ran some Western
Digital
diagnostic software and it says there are no errors.

I ran the recovery console from the XP installation disk and chkdsk /R
gives
the following message:

"The drive contains 1 or more unrecoverable errors"

from the c:\ prompt, if I try to change directories or do anything I get
the
following message:

"There is no floppy disk or CD in the drive"

I also did a FIXMBR and that didn't help.

I have been running Norton antivirus (and updating it weekly) since I
installed XP so I don't think it would be a boot sector virus.

Is this drive toast? I can always do a clean install and restore from
backup blah, blah, blah, but what I am wondering is what caused this and
whether I should rely on this drive or use a different one.

Can I install XP on a new drive and connect to this one as a slave to
recover files.

Spencer:
Hard to say what's causing the problem here. Since you used the WD
diagnostic utility and it reports the drive is not defective, we'll assume
that's so, at least for the moment.

I take it you've been running with the same hardware/configuration over the
past three months with no problems. And this problem just surfaced one day,
right? You hadn't installed any programs or made any changes in your
configuration prior to experiencing this problem, right?

You mention you "know about the jumper 5 and 6 thing". Why do you mention
this? Have you made a jumper change? As I recall, jumpering a WD SATA drive
with that jumper setting *only* applies to SATA II drives, yes? Your drive
is first-generation SATA.

Perhaps the best thing to do at this point is to perform a XP Repair
install - NOT a repair from the Recovery Console. If you're unfamiliar with
undertaking a Repair install, do a Google search. There are a number of
websites that contain detailed step-by-step instructions. It's a relatively
simple & straightforward process.
Anna

 

[Jerry]

Try booting from the XP CD and do a repair install.

 

[Guest]

Repair install is not one of the options. It says "Unknown disk" and does
not give me any drives to work on. It's like windows all of a sudden can't
see the drive. The WD diagnostic utility can when I boot from the cd and the
BIOS sees the drive just not windows.

To answer your question: I have been running for the past three months
without problems and I have not made any hardware/software changes recently
(except to update my antivirus software) but even that was days ago. I only
mentioned the jumper thing because that is the only "known issue" I have
found with WD drives and my particular chipset and I followed the
manufacturers recommendation with the jumper thing and it worked (until
now)...

Thanks for your respone!

 

[Anna]

Repair install is not one of the options. It says "Unknown disk" and does
not give me any drives to work on. It's like windows all of a sudden
can't
see the drive. The WD diagnostic utility can when I boot from the cd and
the BIOS sees the drive just not windows.

To answer your question: I have been running for the past three months
without problems and I have not made any hardware/software changes
recently (except to update my antivirus software) but even that was days
ago.
I only mentioned the jumper thing because that is the only "known issue" I
have found with WD drives and my particular chipset and I followed the
manufacturers recommendation with the jumper thing and it worked (until
now)...

Thanks for your respone!

Spencer:
1. Is there any chance that you have another HD you can boot to and connect
the problem drive as a secondary one to see if the system recognizes it and
data can be accessed? Or is there another computer available to you that you
can similarly use to connect the problem drive as a secondary one?

2. Make absolutely certain that your drive is properly & securely connected.
Do you have another SATA data cable you can use?

3. When you say a Repair install is not an option, can you explain that
further? When you boot to the XP installation disk, do you immediately get
that "Unknown disk" message? Are you able to get to the license agreement
screen and following that screen there's no Repair option? Is that where you
get the "Unknown disk" message?

4. So you can't access the Recovery console to have the system perform a
chkdsk?

5. When you used the WD diagnostic utility, did you have it perform the
"full" test and not just the quickie one?

Anna

 

[ted]

If the SATA controller is a separate board then move it to the farthest PCI
slot from the AGP board. I just had the same problem and this solved it.

 

[Guest]

Your questions were helpful. #3 led me to the solution. In the interest of
thouroughness, here are the answers to your questions:

1) No.
2) Checked all connections, no change.
3) See below (the solution).
4) I can access the recovery console, but it just takes me to a "C:\" prompt
and when I try to do anything disk related (like 'cd' or 'mkdir') it says
"There is no floppy disk in the drive". The system doesn't recognize the HDD
at this point.
5) I did the full test and it came out with zero errors.

The answer was that the registry got trashed somehow and apparently I needed
to reinstall the SATA driver from a floppy disk. What ended up working was I
booted from the XP install disks and hit F6 to specify a SCSI driver. When
it prompted me for a disk I inserted the floppy with the SATA disk drivers.
Then I went into the Recovery Console and performed the standard restore of
an old registry. This allowed me to boot into Windows where I performed a
system restore to my most recent restore point. All is well.

Just out of curiosity, I checked the last entries in my event log before the
crash and windows complained about a user process not shutting down normally
when the system was trying to shutdown. Something about making sure that
processes are set up to run as the "system" user instead of other users.
Now, of course, I can't tell exactly what the message was because now windows
is telling me that my event log is corrupt.

I think I will reinstall windows on an older IDE drive and just use this
SATA drive as extra storage or not use it at all (a shame). Thank you for
your help, it led me in the right direction.