A
Ajg617
Hello,
At my wits end with this. I purchased a larger HD (250gb) for my Dell D600
and installed XP Pro SP2 fresh (upgraded to SP3 and all updates). Ran fine
for two months then I took an update for XP and shut the PC down for the
night. Next morning it would not boot. A little research told me that the
max HD size supported by my machine was 137gb. It was only a matter of time
before Windows would exceed that size limit according to Dell and the system
would fail to boot.
I could not boot into any version of windows XP nor even get a response from
pressing the F8 key. Total hang.
I booted UBCD4Win and defragged and shrank the partition to 135gb. Booting
in Linux, it was clear that all of my ProgramFiles and Documents and Settings
files were intact, but many key OS files were now zero length.
I restored the registry from a Restore Point that I knew worked using
Registry Restore Wizard.
As of now, I can boot off the XP Pro CD into the Recovery Console. It
detects the only installation of Windows and requests my correct admin
password. Have run chkdsk /r, bootcfg /rebuild, fixmbr, fixboot and can now
get the system to respond to the F8 key and give me the correct OS choice
(only the one XP Pro installation). Any attempt to boot hangs on PCI.SYS.
I have recovered that file from the original CD but I still get the same
message.
Having enough of this, I decided to do a re-install. However, Setup does
not recognize the XP installation though it does give me a message that it
not a good idea to load two operation systems on the same partition (I have
only one currently). So it recognizes an OS, but doesn't recognize it as
what is specified in the boot.ini file or any Windows OS.
Any help would be appreciated.
At my wits end with this. I purchased a larger HD (250gb) for my Dell D600
and installed XP Pro SP2 fresh (upgraded to SP3 and all updates). Ran fine
for two months then I took an update for XP and shut the PC down for the
night. Next morning it would not boot. A little research told me that the
max HD size supported by my machine was 137gb. It was only a matter of time
before Windows would exceed that size limit according to Dell and the system
would fail to boot.
I could not boot into any version of windows XP nor even get a response from
pressing the F8 key. Total hang.
I booted UBCD4Win and defragged and shrank the partition to 135gb. Booting
in Linux, it was clear that all of my ProgramFiles and Documents and Settings
files were intact, but many key OS files were now zero length.
I restored the registry from a Restore Point that I knew worked using
Registry Restore Wizard.
As of now, I can boot off the XP Pro CD into the Recovery Console. It
detects the only installation of Windows and requests my correct admin
password. Have run chkdsk /r, bootcfg /rebuild, fixmbr, fixboot and can now
get the system to respond to the F8 key and give me the correct OS choice
(only the one XP Pro installation). Any attempt to boot hangs on PCI.SYS.
I have recovered that file from the original CD but I still get the same
message.
Having enough of this, I decided to do a re-install. However, Setup does
not recognize the XP installation though it does give me a message that it
not a good idea to load two operation systems on the same partition (I have
only one currently). So it recognizes an OS, but doesn't recognize it as
what is specified in the boot.ini file or any Windows OS.
Any help would be appreciated.