A Little Tech Support if You Please :)

[SquireJames]

Hello there

I shut down my PC last night to come to bed, and when my wife Karli turned it on this morning, it had a lovely little error message that said "error loading operating system" on the second screen (the one laid out like a table that appears after the initial BIOS memory check and drive checks).

Now, after reinstalling XP on a different HD, and running a file partition program on it, apparently the drive developed a bad boot sector. I ran the fixboot procedure on the Partition Table Doctor program and tada, now the drive is readable in XP again (i.e my new install can read files from it).

Now, this is good enough. I haven't lost KA2 or any pictures, songs etc but I thought maybe since the bad boot was repaired and there didn't therefore appear to be anything wrong with the OS that it would run again just fine (i.e, the OS hadn't developed a bug, the drive was physically okay, and the bad boot sector repaired, why shouldn't she boot up again right?)

Well, she gets to the screen where the error message previously appeared and then does nothing. Just a flashing cursor at the bottom of the screen and the table of information above it.

Now as I said, not toon much of a problem in the long term since I have the files back. However if at all possible i'd like to boot from that system again, so I haven't got to reinstall all my serial-keyed programs, redo all my file preferences, get all my drivers again and so on.

Any ideas what to do next? I am thinking of trying the windows XP repair procedure but, I don't hold out much hope since I had SP2 installed and I've heard that kind of craps up your chances of repair. Also, would repair keep my settings (i.e desktop, files, IE Favourites, registry information for serial codes and games etc) or would it just install a blank copy of XP onto it? If it does the latter than that is marginally less use than what I have now.

Any help appreciated.

Squire James

 

[Syf]

Well it does sound like the O/S did take some damage. The reinstall will reset the registries, and that would be of no use to you.

Did you have the system restore on. If so, try booting in safe mode and restore the "last" backup. Your best option otherwise is to do what you've stated you don't want to do, have to reinstall everything and such.

 

[SquireJames]

Ah I thought that might be the case. Well, other than a few problems trying to reinstall Photoshop 7 I am pretty much back up and running

I used to have this set up

Primary Master = 320Gb Maxtor
Primary Slave = 80Gb Samsung
Secondary Master = DvD-RAM Drive
Secondary Slave = None

However, I had to use one of my older drives to reinstall windows so now I am using this rather awkward setup

Primary Master = 80Gb Maxtor
Primary Slave = 320Gb Maxtor
Secondary Master = DvD-RAM Drive
Secondary Slave = 80Gb Samsung

I know a HD on the same IDE as an Optical Drive slows the HD, but I don't use it much and I can easily transfer everything from it thats needed over to the 320 when I'm ready.

 

[Syf]

Don't feel bad. I Am in the middle of an upgrade on my PC that started last Saturday. Needless to say, when you buy a new mainboard, be sure make sure it has the right type of power connector that your PSU has. I got all the parts, then discovered my PSU was an older 20pin ATX v1.1. My new board requires an ATX 2.03 PSU. So now I'm waiting, perhaps until next week to finish my system upgrade.

Good thing I built my wife a computer to keep her off of mine.