XP boot problem

[Andy Baker]

I have been given a pc to repair by a friend of a friend. The problem is
that when it is switched on, I get the opening XP screen then it reboots
itself, and I get the screen saying there was a problem starting windows and
I get options for safe mode, last known good configuration, start windows
normally etc. The same thing happens if I choose safe mode.
I have tried a repair installation and it doesn't detect the existing
windows installation only asking to install on the C drive, which it reports
as being virtually empty - can't recall the exact figures but it says that C
is a 9875MB drive with 9874MB free.
I have tried running chkdsk from the recovery console and it reports
that it can't find Autochk.exe. Not really familiar with the recovery
console, but tried changing folders with cd\windows, and it reported 'Path
Not Found'
I connected the drive as a slave to my PC, and I now have a drive D:,
but Windows thinks it is unformatted.
It looks to me like the folder information (FAT or whatever) has been
corrupted somehow. Is there anything I can do to get the folders back, or is
it just a case of reinstalling XP from scratch and hoping that they have
backups. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Andy Baker

 

[Paul]

I have been given a pc to repair by a friend of a friend. The problem is
that when it is switched on, I get the opening XP screen then it reboots
itself, and I get the screen saying there was a problem starting windows and
I get options for safe mode, last known good configuration, start windows
normally etc. The same thing happens if I choose safe mode.
I have tried a repair installation and it doesn't detect the existing
windows installation only asking to install on the C drive, which it reports
as being virtually empty - can't recall the exact figures but it says that C
is a 9875MB drive with 9874MB free.
I have tried running chkdsk from the recovery console and it reports
that it can't find Autochk.exe. Not really familiar with the recovery
console, but tried changing folders with cd\windows, and it reported 'Path
Not Found'
I connected the drive as a slave to my PC, and I now have a drive D:,
but Windows thinks it is unformatted.
It looks to me like the folder information (FAT or whatever) has been
corrupted somehow. Is there anything I can do to get the folders back, or is
it just a case of reinstalling XP from scratch and hoping that they have
backups. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Andy Baker

You could give Testdisk a try and see what it thinks.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Paul

 

[Jason]

No backup - no restore.

 

[Jason]

I had to do that with Windows 2000 Server that wouldn't boot after power
failure (put the SCSI controller card and HDD into an XP (2002) PC). The
problem is, now chkdsk doesn't work (the server runs fine otherwise)because
it appears XP has done something with the structure that the 2000 version
can't handle.