[mcornbill]

Hi all

I cannot get my pc to boot. I'm running XP pro and no matter what option I choose - Normal, Safe mode, debug mode it freezes at the Windows xp flag screen just before it normally asks you to put your password in.

Now this has happened immediately after I ran Discwizard 2002 to try and copy my current c: drive to my new hdd (please see the thread in the Hardrive section: copying entire c.

I set the program to copy and it seemed to be going fine so i left it. When returning to my com the program had finished (or at least I think it had) but there was no confirmation that it had been successful or anything.

So I rebooted my pc and it froze. I tryed the new hdd in IDE 1 to see if that works but that just came up OS load error so it obviously hasn't copied properly.

I try to boot from floppy but no joy. i try to boot from cd but it just keeps booting from the hdd even though I've changed it in the bios.

I've looked at my c: drive in DOS and all the files and folders seem there - can anyone help me I've got some really important stuff on there that I need tonight!!!!!

Cheers guys
Mark

 

[mcornbill]

UPDATE: I have downloaded the 6 boot disks for xp pro and when i put the first one in it says I/O error please insert another disk.

Sheeeez!

 

[mcornbill]

Somebody please. If I can get past this I/O error I should be ok.

 

[johnwill]

I don't think you're being ignored, it's just that this problem is pretty difficult to diagnose at a distance. It's clear that something significant has been corrupted by the copy attempt, I have no idea what state the disks are in.

 

[mcornbill]

Ok have got the xp boot disks to work and and the recovery program to start. Now it asks me for the Administrator password. I didn't think I changed it but I have tryed all my usual passwords and no joy. Does it have to be at least 8 characters long? Is it "password" or "administrator" as standard? Can anyone tell me? Cos after 3 wrong I have to go through the whole 6 floppy disk routine again.

If I have forgot it then what - I'm screwed no doubt!

 

[copex]

hi

your winxp disk should be bootable, go in to you bios and change the boot from option to the following aslog as your bios supports this option.

1 , cdrom
2 , floopy
3, hd0

put you winxp disk in the cdrom, and it shoud boot, now follow the promps and you should get a option to reinstall/repair xp, where you get the new install option

becarfull you dont want to do a new install, usesing the repair/reinstall winxp will keep you setings and programs that are installed

if you had sr1 installed you will have to reinstall sr1.

if this dose not work then what i would do is install winxp on your new HD, set your current HD as a slave and reboot the computer and try and recover what you can

hope it helps

 

[johnwill]

Ok have got the xp boot disks to work and and the recovery program to start. Now it asks me for the Administrator password. I didn't think I changed it but I have tryed all my usual passwords and no joy. Does it have to be at least 8 characters long? Is it "password" or "administrator" as standard? Can anyone tell me? Cos after 3 wrong I have to go through the whole 6 floppy disk routine again.

If I have forgot it then what - I'm screwed no doubt!

Cruise over to NT-PW and download their solution, it'll blank the Admin password for either FAT32 or NTFS.

 

[mcornbill]

Ok we're getting there slowly. Have installed xp on my new hdd which it has now allocated as c:. After doing this I have 2 Windows XP Pro lines at boot. Selecting the top one boots xp from the new hdd, selecting the bottom one boots it from my corrupt old drive, which strangely boots now.

In my old corrupt drive it has been renamed as d: and many of the windows functions aren't working i.e the search facilty, help and support etc. So I ran the 6 floppies again and chose the option to repair the d:. It asked for the administrator password and accepted it this time. Then I'm just left at the d:/windows command prompt. How do I start the repair? The winxp cd is in the drive.

On the note of booting with the cd it wont even after changing BIOS to cd, floppy, hdd-0. It comes up booting from ATAPI CD ROM for a few seconds and then goes to my 2 Windows XP Pro lines with the 30 second countdown.

Right I'd like to start fresh now I have a nice clean hdd running xp fine and bin this old drive. I have another hdd which is is a big storage drive with all my programs and documents, music/video etc. When I put that back in along side my newly working xp drive it wont boot. Put the corrupt drive back again alongside the new one and it boots?

One final question before I go. I thought that the OS hdd always had to be in IDE1 but at the moment it is in IDE2 and working?

PHEW!!!! Thanks for all your help lads with perseverence we will get there.

Mark

 

[johnwill]

Ok we're getting there slowly. Have installed xp on my new hdd which it has now allocated as c:. After doing this I have 2 Windows XP Pro lines at boot. Selecting the top one boots xp from the new hdd, selecting the bottom one boots it from my corrupt old drive, which strangely boots now.

You can edit the BOOT.INI file in the root of C: to remove the second bad instance of XP.

In my old corrupt drive it has been renamed as d: and many of the windows functions aren't working i.e the search facilty, help and support etc.

I'm not sure why you're still tinkering around with two copies, I'd just nuke the old copy and move on.

Right I'd like to start fresh now I have a nice clean hdd running xp fine and bin this old drive. I have another hdd which is is a big storage drive with all my programs and documents, music/video etc. When I put that back in along side my newly working xp drive it wont boot. Put the corrupt drive back again alongside the new one and it boots?

One final question before I go. I thought that the OS hdd always had to be in IDE1 but at the moment it is in IDE2 and working?

You answered the first question with your last statement. The primary master still has the boot files on it, even though the OS is installed on the second drive. When you remove that drive, you also remove the boot files, that's why it doesn't boot.

I hate to say this, but I think I'd just start over, get the drives the way you want them in the machine, with the boot drive as the primary master, and then install XP on it.

 

[mcornbill]

Ok then here's the situation:

I have removed my corrupt hdd completely and have the following drives in:

IDE Primary Master: (my clean xp install on new hdd)

IDE Primary Slave: My DVD Drive

IDE Secondary Master: My large 60gb hdd with just music and documents on, no os.

IDE Secondary Slave: My CD Drive

The set up of the boot routine is as follows:

First boot device: HDD-0
Second boot device: Floppy
Third boot device: CDROM

When powering on I get the message, "Insert boot diskette in drive a:, press spacebar when ready..."

I presume I nned to amend the boot.ini file to point to the c: drive - how do I do this?

Mark

 

[johnwill]

Boot from the CD, and use the FIX BOOT FILES option, I forget the exact title. You want to fix the boot files.

 

[mcornbill]

Cheers for the help guys.

I bit the bullet and did it again from fresh - what's 40 minutes eh?!

After much headbanging with windows not recognising my d: hdd I changed the jumpers on the back to 15 heads and it worked - strange?

Anyway we're all good now and I should be ok in reinstalling all my hardware and software.

Cheers
Mark

 

[johnwill]

It is strange that you needed the 15 head option, I've never used that on any system I've ever setup!

 

[wk530]

Hi all

I cannot get my pc to boot. I'm running XP pro and no matter what option I choose - Normal, Safe mode, debug mode it freezes at the Windows xp flag screen just before it normally asks you to put your password in.

Now this has happened immediately after I ran Discwizard 2002 to try and copy my current c: drive to my new hdd (please see the thread in the Hardrive section: copying entire c.

Im glad you were able to find a solution that worked. I've just gone thru this nitemare myself. The problem stems from the fact that the copy program used swaps your C drive with the new drive in the disk management part of windows. Assuming the copy fails before the user accounts have been copied to the new drive windows wont be able to find the user accounts when it reboots. Since it cant find them it cant log you in. Even as administrator. It does however go ahead and enable networking so I could look at and work with the drives from my other PC. It was clear that my old drive was now F: and the new drive was C:. It was looking for the user accounts on the new drive but I had no clue what to try copying there myself and I could find no way to switch them back.

I was fortunate in that I was able to use norton ghost to copy the old drive to the new one so both had the user accounts on them. This allowed it to boot but didnt fully correct the problem as it was booting partially from 1 drive and then from the other. In drive manager the new drive was still labeled c: but "boot" now appeared by the f: drive instead of c:. I disabled the old drive in the bios and the pc then booted entirely from the new drive and after booting the copy program that had hossed things started up and "finalized" the copy. I was then able to pull the old drive and boot normally from the new drive. Phew.

For what its worth it was the windows version of Maxblast that came with the new drive that messed things up. Although Im sure it usually works it doesnt handle errors well. Neither the dos or windows version of it would continue copying after some file error or other. I'll stick with the dos version of norton ghost if I need to do this again. Im glad I didnt have that drive overlay issue you had. Ghost might not have worked either.