System 32 Fubar

[Darthshearer]

Hi Guys

My mate has an issue and emailed me, wonder if you could help?

posting this from my laptop as the desktop is goosed!! i turn it on and it brings the windows start in safe mode option, now whichever option i take it scrolls through some crap about system32 then the windows flag comes on like its about to go to the password screen then it just restarts again and back to square 1

I suggested reinstalling windows and told him to stop just turning it off without shutting down properly, yet his mate who is an "IT Person" told him defferntly, just would like to know what peeps thoughts are on here

Cheers Guys :worthy:

 

[inactionman]

Does sounds like he may have corrupted some critical windows component by not shutting the system down gracefully, but we'd need to know exactly what the last line of text is to troubleshoot. Just powering the system off is a risk, and should only be done when absolutely necessary!

Has he tried the 'Last known good configuration'? Else he'll have to do a repair install. I would normally have suggested using the repair console, but it sounds like he's not technical enough to use it.

 

[Darthshearer]

Does sounds like he may have corrupted some critical windows component by not shutting the system down gracefully, but we'd need to know exactly what the last line of text is to troubleshoot. Just powering the system off is a risk, and should only be done when absolutely necessary!

Has he tried the 'Last known good configuration'? Else he'll have to do a repair install. I would normally have suggested using the repair console, but it sounds like he's not technical enough to use it.

Sounds about right for him. His mate suggested the following:

You need to run a scandisk on your hard drive Paddy, which will fix it in a matter of minutes. Only problem is you can't get to a prompt to do so. What you need to do is use the Windows XP Recovery Console. To do this:

Got hold of any XP SP2 disk (borrow one if needs be), stick it in the your CD drive and get your computer to boot to it (your boot order should be CDROM first anyway, if not change it in the BIOS). You will see the following message:

The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality.
Type EXIT to exit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

At the prompt type chkdsk /p and press Return. This does an exhaustive check of the drive and corrects any errors.

Type Exit and press return and then reboot your PC. Fingers crossed it should boot through perfectly.

If for any reason it doesn't work, repeat the same process as above but instead type chkdsk /r at the prompt which locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

Hope this helps.

Now, to me that sounds about right?

 

[inactionman]

Should work, unless the system files are beyond recovery.

 

[Bob007]

If he just cutting power when he turns it off, sounds like he might have screwed sectors on the system disk. (spinning at 7000+rpms to generate a cusion of air for the read/write heads to "float" on then removing power, as the disc slows down the heads slam into the disc plates. not good )

chkdsk /f /r if it is a disc read issue might help if the data on the problem parts is still readable but as mentioned before without anymore info on the problem its hard to diagnose.

My surgestion would be to copy out the Boot.ini file to the laptop, edit the line that looks a bit like multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" and add the /sos switch at the end. /sos switch will show the drivers loading instead of the windows loading bar thingy mawhatsit Reboot the puter and press f8(could be f5 menu) and select the option that disables the auto reboot on failure to get a proper look at the error.