Repairing XP Pro.

[gtd2000]

Well any time I've done a repair of XP Pro in the past (x2) it has all gone pretty smoothly..

Now anytime my mother is involved with a PC this is never the case.

Right now I am out of the country and doing this via telephone "blind" and she invariably does not do exactly what I tell her to do and tempers flare etc (I'm sure many of you can identify!!!)

Anyway she can get to the windows repair console and choose repair as per THIS GUIDE however when she gets to the part with

The screen will switch to black and you will be asked which installation to log on to. If you only have one installation you will press "1". Remember that numlock is off at this time.

she presses the number "1" and then presses enter to select that option but does not get the

Next you'll be prompted to enter your Admin password. By default it is created blank so just press Enter.

message (see link for exact info).

I've just gone through the whole procedure on my own PC and the

Next you'll be prompted to enter your Admin password. By default it is created blank so just press Enter.

appears just fine.

Any ideas why it would not give her that option?

Her PC just sits at the option to choose "1" and does not appear to do anything further??

So, right now, option one of repairing XP seems to be off the cards for some unknown reason (to me anyway)?

Another option would be to make a temporary install of XP on another partition of her PC which has two separate HD's (one 120GB with 3 partitions the other an 80GB single partition)
Is there any way to make an installation of XP without deleting all the information via the format function on any of the other partitions?

I'm probably going to be back home in 2 or 3 weeks time so I would be happy to hear from any of you with some good ideas/solutions/suggestions?

 

[imported_Phil]

If the Administrator password is blank, then, IIRC, she will not be prompted for a password.

Thus, she may well be sitting at a command prompt, waiting for something that's not going to appear

 

[gtd2000]

Well, it should ask for the password anyway - if it is blank you just press enter when you see that particular line.

Otherwise you enter the password and then press enter.



If she is sitting at the command prompt - do you have any suggestions what she could or should type - it's not in the "script" I'm familar with

 

[gtd2000]

This is the error when trying to boot into windows:

windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt windows\system32\config\system

This all came about when her Samsung monitor bit the dust and she kept turning the PC off and on hoping it (the monitor) would fire up - which just killed windows instead

 

[Basie]

Hope this helps. I think your Mom is selecting R. She should be pressing Enter. Thanks to Michael Stevens.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm


When you see the "Welcome To Setup" screen, you will see the options below
This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft
Windows XP to run on your computer:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.

Press Enter to start the Windows Setup. do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R", (you Do Not want to load Recovery Console). I repeat, do not choose "To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R".
Accept the License Agreement and Windows will search for existing Windows installations.
Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair. If Repair is not one of the options, read this Warning#2!
Setup will copy the necessary files to the hard drive and reboot. Do not press any key to boot from CD when the message appears. Setup will continue as if it were doing a clean install, but your applications and settings will remain intact.

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: Basie
Hope this helps. I think your Mom is selecting R. She should be pressing Enter. Thanks to Michael Stevens.

Yeah we've tried that too

She gets to the part when choosing the partition to repair but the R key appears to be inoperative.

If she chooses R at the start then there is no option to input the admin password....if she chooses enter to goto setup then selects R on the partition nothing happens...

 

[JW310]

Sounds like this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545 is what needs to be done on her system. I've run into the "windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt windows\system32\config\system" error before on a system that's come into the shop where I work, and by following the instructions in that kb article, I was able to get the system back up and running.

JW

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: gtd2000

Originally posted by: Basie
Hope this helps. I think your Mom is selecting R. She should be pressing Enter. Thanks to Michael Stevens.

Yeah we've tried that too

She gets to the part when choosing the partition to repair but the R key appears to be inoperative.

If she chooses R at the start then there is no option to input the admin password....if she chooses enter to goto setup then selects R on the partition nothing happens...

It's beginning to sound more and more like a faulty/dying hard disk to be honest. If Windows Setup refuses to perform an in-place repair installation of XP, then something's definitely not right.

It's entirely possible that the corrupted registry hive resides on a bad sector, and the drive is going nuts trying to read the sector- the effect being is that the system appears unresponsive or locked.

 

[gtd2000]

I spent most of yesterday on Google and read a lot of items - I feel that the:

Sounds like this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307545 is what needs to be done on her system. I've run into the "windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt windows\system32\config\system" error before on a system that's come into the shop where I work, and by following the instructions in that kb article, I was able to get the system back up and running.

Method above at MS is probably too difficult for her to do over the phone.

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: Phil
It's beginning to sound more and more like a faulty/dying hard disk to be honest. If Windows Setup refuses to perform an in-place repair installation of XP, then something's definitely not right.

It's entirely possible that the corrupted registry hive resides on a bad sector, and the drive is going nuts trying to read the sector- the effect being is that the system appears unresponsive or locked.

It is possible - the drive is a few years old (2003?) and has not had a particularly easy life after those wonderful folks at Purolator played basketball with all my computer equipment when I was working up in Alberta!

Even Fedex smashed the case up on the way back to the UK and it was salvaged and rebuilt. I dunno what these guys do with the packages but I shudder to think!

I'm really just looking for some temporary fix if I cannot get it sorted out remotely. I have a second HD in the system which I use to store mp3's and dvix movies etc but I am loath to format that and install XP. Is there any method whereby I can create a partition in DOS or suchlike on the second 80GD drive and then install XP without formatting the entire drive?

I'm sure I've done a double installation on one partition of XP before and it just ended up in a dual boot scenario - as opposed to formatting the whole drive?