fun with XP

[loserboy]

My friend has a problem with his xp machine but it's been a long time since Ive messed with windows and I've forgotten how to fix it, hoping maybe you guys could help.

The power went off while he was running it, and now when you try to boot it shows safe mode options but but restarts after you choose an option and it tries to boot.

heres the fun part. The guy has no windows disk, whoever built it for him didn't give him one. Now if I use one of my windows disk to do the repair function will it work on his comp even though it's a different disk?
I don't recall do you have to enter the key even on a repair?

[vexorian]

you don't need a key to enter to repair console. You will need his administrator password though and chances are he didn't set it.

[loserboy]

I don't thik he set one, but he's about 80 years old and doesnt remember

[marklid]

Try sticking a Windows XP CD n the drive, boot the machine from the CD, go to the recovery console and at the command line type

chkdsk c: /f /r

Sounds like the file syste is corrupt - the above command should fix it, but be warned it can take a good couple of hours....

Let me know if it works

[DrEmpire]

try disabling Automatically Restart if you can, tho i think if possible make new boot disks either with floppy or a cd r then you could use the recovery program and you dont need the key for it

[umattu]

It depends, is your disc an actual install disc or is it a repair disc. Alot of PC manufacturers ship their PC's with windows recovery discs that will ONLY re-install the system to its original state. These discs are model specific, if you try using them on a differant PC they will seem to work, until it is too late to go back. If it is an install disc from MS than you should be ok.



Now are you saying that the machine actually RESTARTS (as in goes back to bios then POST)?

[loserboy]

@marklid - you sure that chkdsk c: /f /r isn't a full format?

@Drempire - this boot menu doesnt offer that option

@umattu - I have multiple OEM discs, and the computer was a custom build it looks like, so theres no restore disc

what I'm trying to figure out now though is if I can use the repair with my OEM disc on his comp without needing his old key, or needing to use my key

[FuturePilot]

No chkdsk c: /f /r does not format anything. The /f tells it to fix any errors it finds and the /r locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

[marklid]

Well FuturePilot has explained chkdsk already
Any XP install CD (i.e. not manufacturersr recovery CD) should work.

Always handy to have is Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (see www.ubcd4win.com) which includes chkdsk along with tonnes of other stuff.

[DrEmpire]

i think u should just use some kind of a boot disk like someones else windows cd or just download the boot disk it fits on 6 floppys i think can be slow but you can recover from that or copy to boot files to flash drive or cd then you be able to do what you need to do, one more thing i had a problem like it, did you give it enuff time once it took my pc like 5 mins from splash screen to getting into windows