OT: That stupid XP question/rerun becuase I'm an idiot

[smithma7 at gmail.com (Mike Smith)]

Not sure who's reply you're seeking, but...

<Brendan Doyle>

Could be a handful of problems.  First, (easiest one first)
Boot off a Windows XP CD, and hit "r" when asked if you want to go to
the recovery console.  Once in, type: CHKDSK /R and hit enter.  Wait
until it finishes, (can sometimes take 30 minutes or more) remove the
CD and see if it's good.  If not, step 2.

Boot off the XP CD again, go back into the recovery console.
type: expand D:\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ C:\Windows\system32
This is assuming that "D" is your CD drive and "C" is the hard drive
where XP is installed.  Don't forget the space after the ".ex_" and
"C".
It might bitch about overwriting a file, hit "Y".
Remove CD, reboot and pray to deity of choice.  If no, proceed to step
3.  (the longest, and least likely solution)

Once again boot off the CD into the recovery console.
Type: bootcfg /rebuild and hit enter.
Answer "yes" to first question about Adding installation to boot list
For the next question type either Windows XP Professional or Windows
XP Home (whichever you have)
for the 3rd question, just leave it blank and hit enter.

Remove CD, reboot, and select the first item on the boot menu.  It
should boot.  After it has booted, you will have to modify the
boot.ini from within Windows.  It's easy.  Right-click "my computer"
and select properties.  Hit the "advanced" tab, then click the button
for settings next to "startup and recovery".  Under "system startup"
click "Edit".   Look for the Default= part, and see if the string
after that matches one of the strings under [operating systems].  It
should match one of them exactly.  DELETE the string that matches it.
Under [Operating Systems] there should be another entry that is a
little bit different- copy that different string, the entire thing, it
should be similar to this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect and REPLACE the part after "Default=" under [boot loader]
Now, the part under [boot loader] after "Default=" should match the
part that is under [Operating Systems], which is the string we created
back in the recovery console.  :)  Do a "file" "Save" and all should
be good.

Other than that, there is not much to do except decide how important
the files you need are.  :P

Good luck!  I just fixed this problem on friday at one of my client sites.

Brendan

<Chris Bennett>

get a live linux cd and a flash drive recover the files and reload

<Cameron D. Crouse>

I'm pretty Computer Stupid, but is installing a second bootable hard
drive an option, to then gain access to the important documents and back
them up, before considering a format with Win Doze reload?

<Brendan MkII, er... Part II>

First, UNINSTALL EVERYTHING that says symantec, nortons, or any
combination of the two.  It's junk, junk, junk.  Not sure where this
PC came from, so it will more than likely have some trial software and
other related garbage that does not need to be there.  Go ahead and
uninstall that too, it's fun.  :)

The Anti-virus that I recommend (I do not use Anti-virus software
personally) for everyone, as it's light and free, and un-intrusive, is
AVG anti-virus.  http://free.grisoft.com

They do have a purchase version that we like to sell in the shop that
is very nice, but not usually needed- the free version requires a
little more motivation from the end user but it works equally as well.
 Did I mention that it's FREE???

Also, Vista comes with Windows Defender, which has become a decent
anti-spyware package.  As long as you do not click randomly on pop-ups
and links, Defender should do fine- so I recommend not installing
another anti-spyware package.

As for Vista- I recently configured 16 vista laptops at work for our
training center- they were only Celery..er Celeron 2.6's with 512 MB
RAM- not powerhouses by any means- and I have Vista slimmed down
enough that it runs about as well as XP would run on a similar system.
 Most of my tweaks came from BlackViper's site:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

The final section of his tweaks guide is disabling services... not
really a great idea if you do not know what you are doing.  If you
feel like taking the time to go through his Vista Services guide:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm The "Safe" option
works quite well and the majority of what I did is based off of this
configuration.

I have badmouthed Vista a lot, and I still think Microsoft really
released it much earlier than they should have, but once everything is
slimmed down it runs quite well.  Of course, at that point, it's
basically still XP.  Oh well.  I'm running Windows Fundamentals for
Legacy PC's- a shame they never released this to the public.


Good luck!

Brendan

<Me...>

Hope that's what you're looking for Cathy.