Worm caused shutdown during Service Pack Install - System now corrupted - Suggestions?

[Mike Mills]

Hello,

A co-worker was in the process of downloading WinXP SP1, when the
"msblast.exe" worm caused her machine to shutdown. This seems to have
corrupted her Windows installation, as her machine will no longer boot up -
it goes into a "boot loop". None of the safe mode options work, not even
safe mode with command prompt - it just ends up going back into the boot
loop.

Complicating things is that her machine only has a "recovery" CD - which
means that she has to reformat the hard drive completely, rather than just
re-install over the corrupt version of Windows.

I took her hard drive out and mounted it to a Linux machine; I'm currently
backing up her files. Its an NTFS partition, and the Linux driver just
supports read-only. Once the backup is complete, I figured that I would try
mounting it to a working WinXP machine, and try to access the files (with
read/write capability) that way. I would like to fix this corruption
problem, if possible, rather than forcing a complete reformat.

Any suggestions on how to determine exactly _what_ is corrupted, and how to
fix it?

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Mike Mills]

Just "pinging" this message...still looking for any suggestions, if anyone
can help.

One other question - Could she re-install WinXP using someone else's CD, but
then use the product key from her own copy? Again, she only has a
"recovery" CD, which forces a full format.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Curt]

Just "pinging" this message...still looking for any suggestions, if anyone
can help.

One other question - Could she re-install WinXP using someone else's CD, but
then use the product key from her own copy? Again, she only has a
"recovery" CD, which forces a full format.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Just "pinging" this message...still looking for any suggestions, if anyone
can help.

One other question - Could she re-install WinXP using someone else's CD, but
then use the product key from her own copy? Again, she only has a
"recovery" CD, which forces a full format.

<snip>

Another CD might not work with her product key .. the versions and
languages are encoded in there somewhere. However you should be able to
boot the recovery console off another WinXP CD, logon (as Administrator)
and run sfc, restore backup copy(ies) of the registry(ies), run chkdsk,
and those sorts of things.

You might want to point out to her what a PITA this 'recovery disk' cr&p
is, so net time she goes shopping for a system she doesn't buy one
without a proper CD.