Need a IT person for some help please.

8 Jan 2005

Clare & Steve_Lincs pc has died and whilst trying to reinstall Windows XP Steve has encountered an error with a missing/corrupt file.
I've looked online and taken them through the steps with the help files I can find but no luck.
The pc will not reboot in safe mode and isn't locating his file. We've tried DOS but Steve's hard drive is NTFS and of course DOS isn't the biggest fan of NTFS. He is running Home Edition and has one partition (but obviously we can't check to make sure that it's seeing that properly). He cannot get the pc for reboot in safe mode (any safe mode) so can't edit the through windows.
Steve and I have been round in circle for about an hour and had no joy and he's been trying all day to resolve it sad

Can anyone else help at all??? Please can you pm me and I'll sort something out without about getting in touch.
Calista x

8 Jan 2005

Um emergency install to another folder to allow access for file backup and clean install?

8 Jan 2005

Buy new hard drive, clean install to that, get some drive recovery software, use that to recover that which is wanted on the other drive.
That's the way I've always dealt with problems with windows no longer wanting to play.

8 Jan 2005

Similar (and easier if you have the cash) to installing windows to a second dir smile

If you can afford the drive and happy installing them it certainly easier and good way to persuade other half that you 'need' a new HD ;)

8 Jan 2005

This post reminded me that I really need to backup my data on my PC - been ages since I did so confused

Hope u get your problems sorted.

8 Jan 2005

Boot from the XP CD and go into the recovery console and type "bootcfg /rebuild" ,without quotes, to repair the file.

8 Jan 2005

Quote by sussexguy
Boot from the XP CD and go into the recovery console and type "bootcfg /rebuild" ,without quotes, to repair the file.

tried it

9 Jan 2005

Some other things you could try from the recovery console are:
copy D: _ C: where D: is the CD drive and C: is the drive where windows is installed.
chkdsk /r
or from DOS run the system restore using C:system32 estore

9 Jan 2005

Quote by Calista
Clare & Steve_Lincs pc has died and whilst trying to reinstall Windows XP Steve has encountered an error with a missing/corrupt file.
I've looked online and taken them through the steps with the help files I can find but no luck.
The pc will not reboot in safe mode and isn't locating his file. We've tried DOS but Steve's hard drive is NTFS and of course DOS isn't the biggest fan of NTFS. He is running Home Edition and has one partition (but obviously we can't check to make sure that it's seeing that properly). He cannot get the pc for reboot in safe mode (any safe mode) so can't edit the through windows.
Steve and I have been round in circle for about an hour and had no joy and he's been trying all day to resolve it
Can anyone else help at all??? Please can you pm me and I'll sort something out without about getting in touch.
Calista x

HAL stands fo hardware abstraction layer. In the non swinging sense - you're fucked. Take an XP cd and boot from it. Go through the installation procedure and select the existing partition to install on. DO NOT delete or recreate any partitions. XP will reload a fresh, bootable copy over the existing one, fixing any errors. All the data will remain but you will need to reinstall the majority of programs for them to work as the registry will have been wiped. All of your browser history etc. will still be there.

9 Jan 2005

No expert I'm afraid, I build all my own PC's from scratch then wind up trying everything until they work if something isn't right with the OS... Then I can never remember what I did to sort it... I have found so far that Win 98se is the most stable for booting a new PC into the world, some folks will probably disagree... When you get this fixed I'd make sure you have a good second HD back up installed as well, you can pick up a small 10GB plus second hand drive from a computer fair that should have plenty of space for the really important stuff for about 20 quid.
I have a dual boot system here, Win 98se on C drive, and XP Pro on D drive with a lot of cross back-ups between the drives... XP's pretty but I don't find it all that user friendly or stable at times, might be just me.

9 Jan 2005

You can get a version of DOS that will work on NTFS formatted drives. I have it and have used it but not sure where you can get it as I just aquired my copy (as you do).
I am sure a hunt on google for "NTFS DOS" will get the results.

9 Jan 2005

knoppix worls with ntfs to recover the files if you have somewhere to download it and burn it. ( I think) once you get to this stage though, XP usually demands a reformat of the drive before reinstall so unless you copy the data before reinstall you've usually lost it.
knoppix is brill though, you may decide not to reinstall XP afterall biggrin

the penguin has never done this to me!! :twisted: :twisted:

9 Jan 2005

Ok well thanks for al the help dont know when we'll be back on just pray for a miracle please!!
Anyone coming to Saturdays party can you please ring us on the phone numbers we gave outin the confirmation pm's as we dont know when we'll be back on!!!!!
Hopefully see you all very soon biggrin

9 Jan 2005

Well i'm at a loss now coz ive downloaded a program to test the hard drive called Drive Fitness Test and i rebooted and ran it and evidently the hard drive is working alright.
I'm going to install drivers etc one by one to check that its not one of them thats causing the problem.
One thing that i did install about a month ago was a graphics card,the original one is on the system anyone know if this could be the problem???

9 Jan 2005

Quote by Steve_Lincs
Well i'm at a loss now coz ive downloaded a program to test the hard drive called Drive Fitness Test and i rebooted and ran it and evidently the hard drive is working alright.
I'm going to install drivers etc one by one to check that its not one of them thats causing the problem.
One thing that i did install about a month ago was a graphics card,the original one is on the system anyone know if this could be the problem???

If you not using it you may want to disable the onboard graqphics in the BIOS.

9 Jan 2005

Agh Time computer... only 1 sure fix...

9 Jan 2005

Quote by tallnhairy
Well i'm at a loss now coz ive downloaded a program to test the hard drive called Drive Fitness Test and i rebooted and ran it and evidently the hard drive is working alright.
I'm going to install drivers etc one by one to check that its not one of them thats causing the problem.
One thing that i did install about a month ago was a graphics card,the original one is on the system anyone know if this could be the problem???

If you not using it you may want to disable the onboard graqphics in the BIOS.
It won't give me that option in the bios

9 Jan 2005

Have you tried going to a system restore point b4 the graphics card was installed??????

9 Jan 2005

Quote by Steve_Lincs
Well i'm at a loss now coz ive downloaded a program to test the hard drive called Drive Fitness Test and i rebooted and ran it and evidently the hard drive is working alright.
I'm going to install drivers etc one by one to check that its not one of them thats causing the problem.
One thing that i did install about a month ago was a graphics card,the original one is on the system anyone know if this could be the problem???

If you not using it you may want to disable the onboard graqphics in the BIOS.
It won't give me that option in the bios
Can't you do it from the device manager?
start>rightclick "My computer">properties> Hardwear>Device manager click om the little +box next to "Display adaptors then rightclick on the one you want to disable and hit disable. Job done. biggrin

Steve and I had a chat earlier tonight and we both thought that maybe part of the HD physical surface may be damaged. Anyone got an opinion on this?

10 Jan 2005

Thanks for all who have given advice on this its been most helpful,especially Easy,Calista,Morbius and Chris of MollyandChris who have put up with loads of questions and boring shite from me.
The computer seems to be working just fine,but i havent downloaded service pack 2 as this was the first thing that buggered up.
All the drivers are installed and ive put on nortons firewall and systemworks.
Fingers crossed it might be ok.

10 Jan 2005

Quote by easy
Steve and I had a chat earlier tonight and we both thought that maybe part of the HD physical surface may be damaged. Anyone got an opinion on this?

it's almost never a problem on the surface of the disk, but when it is you can hear it making lots of noise. hard disks usually come with an impact rating of around 300G so it'd be quite hard to do too lol

glad the PC is all sorted out, SP2 did have a lot of problems but it's an important update so you are best off trying it again

10 Jan 2005

Quote by
it's almost never a problem on the surface of the disk, but when it is you can hear it making lots of noise. hard disks usually come with an impact rating of around 300G so it'd be quite hard to do too
glad the PC is all sorted out, SP2 did have a lot of problems but it's an important update so you are best off trying it again

Yeah i know that its an important update but i dare not try it yet,im just glad to have it up and taken two days,about 20 hours of my time and 4 re formats :fuckinghell:

10 Jan 2005

Calista
would love to help...........but when it comes to IT I am a complete T....IT smile

10 Jan 2005

Quote by Steve_Lincs

it's almost never a problem on the surface of the disk, but when it is you can hear it making lots of noise. hard disks usually come with an impact rating of around 300G so it'd be quite hard to do too
glad the PC is all sorted out, SP2 did have a lot of problems but it's an important update so you are best off trying it again

Yeah i know that its an important update but i dare not try it yet,im just glad to have it up and taken two days,about 20 hours of my time and 4 re formats :fuckinghell:
the sooner you do it the better because there is less to go wrong. if you have broadband download knoppix which I mentioned earlier, you can use this instead of windows in an emergency, and no install is required just boot off the CD and you have net access, office software cd writing, games, the works. then it's a bit less frustrating if things go wrong biggrin

10 Jan 2005

Quote by

it's almost never a problem on the surface of the disk, but when it is you can hear it making lots of noise. hard disks usually come with an impact rating of around 300G so it'd be quite hard to do too
glad the PC is all sorted out, SP2 did have a lot of problems but it's an important update so you are best off trying it again

Yeah i know that its an important update but i dare not try it yet,im just glad to have it up and taken two days,about 20 hours of my time and 4 re formats :fuckinghell:
the sooner you do it the better because there is less to go wrong. if you have broadband download knoppix which I mentioned earlier, you can use this instead of windows in an emergency, and no install is required just boot off the CD and you have net access, office software cd writing, games, the works. then it's a bit less frustrating if things go wrong biggrin

Thanks for that i'll do it kiss

10 Jan 2005

Quote by cummon
Calista
would love to help...........but when it comes to IT I am a complete T....IT

:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao:

10 Jan 2005

ask and you shall recieve

10 Jan 2005

Quote by Silk and Big G
ask and you shall recieve

am I missing something? who asked? very nice though biggrin

10 Jan 2005

Its Tara Palmer ........shes an IT girl