XP not booting. What to do? - RESOLVED

[Scoticus]

Yesterday I was unable to boot XP all attempts to use F10 to restore came to nothing. I booted 2.15CE and found that my Logitech mouse had froze so after a battery change and nothing reverted to ps/2 keyboard and mouse.

This worked and on mounting the drive I was told that NTFS required fixing. Using the instruction "ntsfix \dev\hda2" I was informed that the fix had taken place. Attempted to reboot XP but still nothing. Went back to Puppy and this time when mounting the disk I received this remark

"The ntfs-3g driver was able to mount the NTFS
partition but returned this error message:
WARNING: Dirty volume mount was forced by the 'force' mount option.

It is mounted read/write, but advice is only write
to it in emergency situation. Recommendation is
boot Windows and fix the filesystem first!!!

Where should I go from here. My partner is threatening murder if she can't get XP up and working.

Ian

[WhoDo]

WARNING: Dirty volume mount was forced by the 'force' mount option....snip...
Where should I go from here. My partner is threatening murder if she can't get XP up and working.

Ian, put your XP CD in the drive and boot from that. When prompted, choose R to repair from a console. When you are presented with a DOS-like screen, use chkdsk -R to repair the filesystem. Then reboot from the hard drive and all should be well.

Hope that helps.

[Scoticus]

Many thanks for your reply.

This is the first timethat I have had this problem and it had just came at the worst time. I had just finished adjusting a spreadsheet beforegoing on holiday and Brenda brought home 500 + photographs neither of which I had backed up.

I spent some time last night attempting to see if I could salvage anything from the mess without success.

If I follow your advice is there any hope or is it just start everything all over again. I hope not as she who must be obeyed will murder me.

Looking forward to hearing from you

Ian

[WhoDo]

If I follow your advice is there any hope or is it just start everything all over again. I hope not as she who must be obeyed will murder me.

There is every hope, Ian. Besides, you have nothing to lose. If it recovers your system, you're back in the good books. If it doesn't, you will be in no condition to care one way or the other!

All chkdsk -R does is to check the ntfs file system for errors and repair them if it can. You might even run it more than once if it doesn't succeed the first time, although that would be a rarity. I have used it to recover a hard disk installation after a disk crash, just to get the data off before the drive finally died.

Good luck.

[Philh]

You could try F8 to see if you can get into safe mode.

Phil

[alienjeff]

... and if you can get into safe mode, get to the command prompt and type: chkdsk/F

That little trick just saved my father's XP installation today and slowed further greying of the alien beard.

-aj

[8-bit]

IF you have a floppy drive on the computer, and have access to another PC running XP, use the other one to format a floppy (no copy of system on it). Next, Open windows Explorer and unhide files including system files. Copy ntdetect.com, ntldr, and boot.ini to the floppy. Reset hiding the system and hidden files on XP. Take the floppy to your nonbooting XP and try to boot from it.

[Scoticus]

Many thanks to all. I tried twice to restore using the disk provided by the PC manufacturer.

When given the restore choice and having selectedthe C drive and typing chkdsk - r it went into the cycle reaching 70+% only to return back to 50% where it went around again and completed. On typing EXIT I removed the disk and attempted to reboot - nothing.

The cycle starts with the BIOS info followed by the motherboard display and use del for setup. Finally F10 for recovery displays but no matter how many times I enter F10 nothing happens. I end up with a totally blank screen, no cursor display, a complete nothing.

Will try later the F8 suggestion and see what happens there.

Failing that can anyone offer guidance if I can copy from the XP my photos folder over to Puppy. I am determined to do all possible to ensure that the pictures are saved before the last resort of a total re-install.

Anyone know who took my lucky white heather ? I am in great need of it.

Ian

PS Looking at the post from alienjeff the remark about chkdsk/F struck a chord. I remember being offered two options 1. F:\MININT and 2. C:\WINDOWS and I took the obvious option of 2. Did I do right ?

[WhoDo]

When given the restore choice and having selectedthe C drive and typing chkdsk - r it went into the cycle reaching 70+% only to return back to 50% where it went around again and completed. On typing EXIT I removed the disk and attempted to reboot - nothing.

Some disk errors may take more than one attempt to correct. That's why chkdsk -R keeps returning to 50% and trying to get further. That same principle means you also need to run the chkdsk -R again.

Finally, from the repair console, type fixMBR and fixboot and THEN try to reboot into Windows. You won't be able to access your Puppy partition for a while, but at least you'll get access to the Windows data.

If worse comes to worst, boot from your Puppy LiveCD and see if you can mount the NTFS partition to recover your photos.

Hope that helps.

[Scoticus]

I was not totally happy in my attempts to copy over data to Puppy and consequently had a data recovery company do their magic.

Bought a new HD and am in the process of installing all my bits and bobs to get things up and running. Before I start restoring all the data back over to XP I had thought that I might consider partitioning the drive. When installing XP I was not offered a FAT option so I am stuck at the moment with Hobsons choice.

What is suggested for a Linux partitioning to suit Puppy on a 80GB HD.

Thanking you in anticipation of your kind assistance

Ian