Windows XP home - black screen - no option for repair installation

[timswim78]

Background: Hriend's computer, he does not want to do a Windows reinstall because he does not want to reinstall loads and loads of software. Also, he does not have a Ghost or Acronis image of his machine. Luckily his documents are backed up.

Issues:
- Computer boots up, displays Windows splash screen, and it then goes to a black screen with a mouse cursor on it. (The cursor can be moved, but the computer does not seem to respond to any keyboard commands such as CTRl-ALT-DEL).
- I tried booting in safe mode, and I get the exact same results as above.
- I tried the option of booting from last known working configuration and get the same results as above.
- I tried to do a repair installation, but the option to do a repair install on the partition does not appear. The Windows installer says that the partition is corrupt and will need to be formatted to do an installation. The next time that I booted the machine, Windows ran its regular disk scan and rebooted itself before I got to see any messages.

Goal:
Ideally, I would like to be able to get his system running to the point where I can get in there and trouble shoot problems or do a repair install of Windows XP. Because I had a few extra hard disks lying around, I cloned his hard disk a couple of times with Acronis. Since I have multiple backups, I am willing to take some risks.

Your thoughts?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: timswim78
Background: Hriend's computer, he does not want to do a Windows reinstall because he does not want to reinstall loads and loads of software. Also, he does not have a Ghost or Acronis image of his machine. Luckily his documents are backed up.

Issues:
- Computer boots up, displays Windows splash screen, and it then goes to a black screen with a mouse cursor on it. (The cursor can be moved, but the computer does not seem to respond to any keyboard commands such as CTRl-ALT-DEL).
- I tried booting in safe mode, and I get the exact same results as above.
- I tried the option of booting from last known working configuration and get the same results as above.
- I tried to do a repair installation, but the option to do a repair install on the partition does not appear. The Windows installer says that the partition is corrupt and will need to be formatted to do an installation. The next time that I booted the machine, Windows ran its regular disk scan and rebooted itself before I got to see any messages.

Goal:
Ideally, I would like to be able to get his system running to the point where I can get in there and trouble shoot problems or do a repair install of Windows XP. Because I had a few extra hard disks lying around, I cloned his hard disk a couple of times with Acronis. Since I have multiple backups, I am willing to take some risks.

Your thoughts?

That last symptom is very ominous. It sounds like the installer is not able to read the system registry hive (or some related items) from the current install.

Are you able to get to recovery console? If so do a chkdsk /p.

The results may vary (stuff corrected, not corrected etc) but if you see "unrecoverable" in the results then it truly means that. If you see this word, go ahead and get this drive mounted in another box and start recovering data.

If you don't see unrecoverable then try to reboot. If it fails again follow the steps for recovering from a "missing or corrupt system32\config\system" error. There is a KB for XP on it.

 

[timswim78]

Originally posted by: Smilin

1. That last symptom is very ominous. It sounds like the installer is not able to read the system registry hive (or some related items) from the current install.

2. Are you able to get to recovery console? If so do a chkdsk /p.

3. The results may vary (stuff corrected, not corrected etc) but if you see "unrecoverable" in the results then it truly means that. If you see this word, go ahead and get this drive mounted in another box and start recovering data.

4. If you don't see unrecoverable then try to reboot. If it fails again follow the steps for recovering from a "missing or corrupt system32\config\system" error. There is a KB for XP on it.

1. OK, thanks for the info.

2. Yes, I can get into recovery console. I'm at work, but I will run chkdsk /p when I get home tonight.

3. OK, thanks for the info. I'll be sure to look through the results to see if stuff is unrecoverable.

4. Thanks again for the info. For anyone else interested, I found the KB article here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us