Xp help please

[rfisher]

Main laptop running Xp Home won't boot.

Get to the Xp logo screen, few seconds later a quick blue screen 'o' death with lots of writing flashes up but disappears too quickly to read. Then computer reboots.

Cycle repeats despite any choice made to boot to safe mode, command prompt etc.

I can get to C: drive via floppy boot up. If I run scandisk it hangs on checking file allocation table at 17%.

Using the original Xp CD and repair option I get the C:> prompt but don't know what to do next.

Really don't want to reinstall Xp as IIRC it formats C drive before installation and that would really feck up my life.

I do have a recent HDD backup but I'll lose recent emails if I Ghost that onto my C drive. If anyone knows where Outlook Express 6 saves its DBX files in Xp that would help as I could recover my emails that way.

Beers all round if anyone can help me fix this.

Ta.

[boony]

If you issue the command: dir "c:\documents and settings\*.dbx" /s/a when at your C:\> prompt, that'll tell you where your .dbx files are. I think they'll be off documents and settings somewhere, if they're not found, use the command dir c:\*.dbx /s/a - it'll take a while longer though.

I'm sure from memory that when you go to install XP, it gives the option to repair the current installation which should leave all your programs intact. I've never actually tried it though, so I would save everything you can before trying it just in case.

Good luck
Boon

edit to add \ before *.dbx!

Edited by boony on Monday 20th August 00:22

[ThePassenger]

Ok.

A 'repair install' will, attempt to overlay a fresh install of Windows on to a your existing copy. This 'can' work, however, I wouldn't hold your breath and if it does, I'd consider it a stopping of point to "backup and reinstall".

If the 'repair' install fails, which it probably will, we can talk about something more complex: gparted ISO's to repartition the disk and install XP to a different area, THEN backing up and blasting the drive.

Either way, a complete reinstall of Windows is in your near future, the amount of hoops you're going to jump through to be able to do that... depends on how badly banjo'd the install is.

[rfisher]

So how do I do a repair install?

When I select 'r' in setup to repair a previous installation I just come back to C: drive prompt.

My theory is that Xp fried a sector of FAT data on shutdown. Don't understand why setup or scandisk can't repair this from the 2nd FAT copy.

[buggalugs]

At the recovery console prompt,
chkdsk c: /p /r
If it seems to hang, just leave it longer. If it fails before the end do it again. fat32 doesn't repair as well as ntfs but you still need to try this anyway.

To do a repair install you don't hit r on that screen, you continue on to the bit just before it asks you which partition to install to then it asks you if you want to repair the installation. If it doesnt ask you to repair but prompts you to overwrite its either not the right version of XP CD or the old installation is too fecked. Do the chkdsk thing first though.

[rfisher]

Oh dear - chkdsk in recovery console says 'the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems'

Waaaaaaaaaah.

[buggalugs]

rfisher said:

Oh dear - chkdsk in recovery console says 'the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems'

Waaaaaaaaaah.

Run it again - it often gets a bit further each time. Not joking. Try 3-4 times making a note of the %age it gets to each time.

[Munter]

My plan would be.
As there is no way you'll be wanting to rely on that hard drive again: Buy a replacement. Remove original disk and fit new disk. Install XP onto the replacement disk. Put original disk back in as a 2nd disk, and copy off any data you can that you want. Ok you have to start with a fresh install and re-install all your apps etc, but it might be quicker than running scan disk a lot. And then changing your disk anyway.