Windows XP Recovery Console problem: No login prompt?

[iamwiz82]

I have a strange problem. I have a computer here who's owner compained that it kept rebooting. After looking quickly at it, I noticed mup.sys is failing and this is fairly common in Windows XP. I figured I'd just login to the recovery console and then disable mup and be good to go. Unfortunately, I cannot get it to work.

When I enter the RC, i never get prompted for a user name and password and therefore I am denied from all of the directories.
Any ideas?

 

[Slikkster]

XP RC can't find a valid installation, suggesting that there's an MBR problem, possibly. You can use basic commands like fixmbr, etc. even without getting into the systemroot folder to do what you really want. But given that RC doesn't even see a valid install, I'd say this is the root of ALL the problems on that PC. Here's MS's page on the issue you're having:

Recovery Console starts with no password/user prompt

Try using the fixmbr and/or fixboot options, as the article suggests.