Recovery Console Help

[Kubie]

Friend has a Dell with XP Home and tells me she only gets a black screen at bootup that says,

C:\Windows System32 file is missing or corrupt.

I start the pc with the XP cd and press R and enter. When it asks what we want to repair, the choice is 1. C:\Windows
We enter the 1 and enter.
There I am lost. What is the next step?
TIA

[kev7555]

At the first prompt you want to select to install XP. Later you will be given a second repair option screen where you select repair XP.

This is a bit easier then using the recovery console, unless you are familiar with DOS commands.

-Kev

[Kubie]

Thanks for the quick response Kev.
I did some more research and I see what you mean. Since this repair needs to be done over the phone, I'll look into the easier approach.
Thank you again!

[thefultonhow]

You shouldn't need to do anything over the phone unless you use an OEM-specific CD with a built-in product key and it asks you to reactivate. If you use the same CD as you originally used to install, or the same type (a Dell CD if it's a Dell, a vanilla OEM CD if it's from Newegg, etc) you shouldn't have to call Microsoft up even if you are prompted to reactivate.

[Kubie]

The over the phone part is me helping my friend!
I'm going to see if I can walk her through it.
Thanks tFH!

[thefultonhow]

LOL, okay, I misinterpreted what you wrote.

[Kubie]

Back to square one. We are using the original Dell XP cd. We can't get by the Repair Instruction. We can't get it to go to the Install or repair screen to make the choice.

[Ob1]

follow these directions
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

[kev7555]

There is a lot of good information in there, but it may be somewhat difficult for the average user to follow.

Please tell us step-by-step what is happening when you try to do a repair install.

This should be the procedure:

Place the XP CD in the optical drive, restart the computer. when prompted, press any key to boot from CD. Wait for Windows to load the setup files. At the first welcome to Windows screen, select: "To set up Windows XP now, press enter". DO NOT select repair at this point.

Accept the license agreement and when the next options screen appears, make sure that your previous version of windows is highlighted and select: "To repair the selected Windows installation, press R".


-Kev

[kev7555]

If the repair install does not solve your problem, you may want to read this thread I was invloved with last week. If you go straight to the end it wil tell you what I finally had to do in order to repair a Windows no-boot problem and still save data from the original OS installation.


http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=168506

[Kubie]

Kev,
I'm still trying to get in contact with her. I didn't mean to leave this hanging.. So far, the problem has been not being able to get the "Install WindowsXP" option. It just wants to do the repair.
I may remove her HDD and slave it to a CD-rom and copy her important files to either a floppy or a cd or my thumb drive. She doesn't have many files but they are important. I've told her many times to BACK THEM UP if they are that important.
I'll let you know whats going on when I find out what she wants to do.

[glc]

Before you start playing with trying to repair it, backing up her files that way is a VERY GOOD IDEA anyway.

If you want to just nuke and pave the thing after doing that, you are going to need more than the XP disk. Make sure she has all the CD's that came with the computer plus all software that she has purchased and added. The Dell XP CD is not a full restore disk, it's just Windows.

Depending on age and model of the Dell, it also may have a full restore partition. This is the easiest way, you press Ctrl+F11 (I believe) on bootup to access it. This will reinstall *everything* and you MAY have both a destructive and a nondestructive option.

Something you can try using the repair console. Log into the console, after pressing 1 it should ask you for the administrator password. Just hit enter and you should be at a c:\windows prompt. Type chkdsk /r and wait about an hour. When it's done, type exit and when it reboots eject the CD.

Dells have a diagnostic partition. To access it press F12 on bootup - you get a menu. You can choose full hardware diags or just hard drive diags. You may want to run those. If the diagnostic partition is missing or damaged, you can run diags by booting with the Dell Resource CD that came with the computer.

[thefultonhow]

Originally Posted by glc Depending on age and model of the Dell, it also may have a full restore partition. This is the easiest way, you press Ctrl+F11 (I believe) on bootup to access it. This will reinstall *everything* and you MAY have both a destructive and a nondestructive option.

Ctrl+F11 is correct, but it's Ghost-based, so it's destructive only.

[Kubie]

Hey GLC, how ya doing?
I have the Dell here and using the chkdsk /r function, it went to 50%, stopped, and said there were one or more unrepairable problems.
I then used the F12 function to do some diagnostics. When I selected to test the IDE, etc, it said there wasn't one to diagnose.
Then I selected to test "Will Not Boot to O/S".
HDD failure is what it looks like. It failed the IDE disk Confidence Test and the Read test and won't go any further.
It is testing the rest of the drive but I think its gone.
To make sure, I'll run Spinrite and diags from the UBD.

[Kubie]

I want to thank everybody that came to my rescue.
Was NOT the HDD, but once I slaved the HDD to my test pc and saved all of the important files, I did a reinstall and now the pc is fine. (Until the next time!)

Thanks again!