RE: XP SP1 cannot reboot after applying 10/12/04 patches

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Bear00001 (Bear00001_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 10/17/04 

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 20:33:02 -0700

Solved my own problem...

After logging a ticket with HP to be told "reformat your drive and
re-install. Sorry about your data".

I logged a ticket with Microsoft who could not help much more in booting off
the corrupted drive from Original Windows XP Pro SP1 CD's.

I solved the problem myself (while on hold for 20 minutes with Microsoft) by
following these steps:

Create a Windows XP boot diskette by looking up Microsoft Article ID 305595.
 I had one from 2 years ago because of problems with the /3G NTLDR switch
that was causing my previous system to die. You need a working computer
(friend/neighbours not necessarily XP) to create the floppy.

The floppy disk only has a few MBR files and points to the C: hard drive for
the rest of Windows. Though it won't fix the problems with Windows, it
SHOULD let you get to the Restore utility from the command line option of
"Safe mode".

The files on the floppy are:
boot.ini
DRVSPACE.BIN
IO.SYS
MSDOS.SYS
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr

Once in command line - safe mode, follow the instructions at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304449

which explain how to recover from a restore point.

The recovery takes a while, even if there are volumes that you have taken
offline.
Once things are back up, I suggest you make a backup of critical data before
going too far. Nero (multi-CD/DVD backup option) or Drive Image 7 are good
tools to do this.

Good luck!

Rob

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