repair install of XP on a Dell?

[QueBert]

Have a friend with a Dell, it's giving him a 7B BSOD about 2 seconds after the windows xp load screen comes up. I googled and the only thing I could find was changing the SATA mode from RAID to SATA, I checked the BIOS and it was set for Raid, so I switched it. Same crap though. He deleted the recovery partition a few years ago , so he grabbed an XP disc he had bought off Newegg a bunch of years ago. When he starts the installer it's not giving him a repair option. He has some proprietary software that can't be bought anymore so he'd like to do a repair install. Googling this I'm not 100% sure, but I think it has something to do with the XP that's on there being a Dell OEM version. Is there anything he can do to make his full XP disc do a repair install? The stop message isn't pointing to a system file, or giving any reason, it just says stop 0x000007B. He's ran Chkdsk /r and that didn't do anything.

He cannot even boot into safe mode, he still gets an instant stop 7b message.

 

[Matt1970]

If the repair option isn't available then I think he has the wrong version of XP.

 

[Bubbaleone]

"When he starts the installer it's not giving him a repair option."

I take it you don't physically have the computer to look at. As long as the disk he used is a full installation disk, the repair option will be available. If it isn't, then the Windows setup isn't "seeing" a valid Windows installation to repair. So the first thing that comes to mind is an invalid boot sector and/or MBR, either of which look like "no Windows installed here"!

Have him boot the CD again, and when text setup finishes, tell him to select "R" (Repair Windows using the Recovery Console). Once logged into the RC he needs to run these three commands in sequence, pressing ENTER after each one:

FIXBOOT C:

FIXMBR C:

EXIT

Now see if he can run the Repair Installation.

 

[QueBert]

damn forgot the old fixboot thing thanks bubbaone, I think I need to go help him tomorrow. He knows a bit about computers but not much. I just got off the phone with him telling him this. Apparently his brother (who's out of the state) thought he would make things easy for him if he needed to install XP and used Nlite to make a unattended install where he wouldn't have to do anything. So I'm thinking that's why he's not even getting a recovery console option. The fixboot thing could be why the installer isn't seeing XP, or maybe it was his brother flubbing up the disc with Nlite. His brother knows more than him, but I wouldn't say enough to be messing with making custom install discs lol.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Yup...Nlite unattended will surely screw the pooch. You could always extract the files from the CD into a folder, and run Nlite on it again, without the unattended switch.

 

[QueBert]

Welp I got my hands on it today, and in recovery mode I cannot log on because it says the administrator password is incorrect. I downloaded Ophcrack & Offline NT Password. Both are showing it as empty, but it's apparently not. I Googled to see if Dell had some sort of default admin password, PASSWORD & admin didn't work. I figured with Ophcrack it would be a cake walk, but apparently I underestimated this, and without being able to connect to the recovery console I can't run Fixboot or Fixmbr.

If anyone has any ideas I'm all ears, I googled this and am out of ideas, but I'm not one to give up so come the morning time I'll be back over trying until I figure something out.

 

[WT]

So why not boot to an Ultimate Boot CD and run the CMD prompt from there ? Just set it to boot to the optical first, then from within the Live CD run the commands you need to run.