Peter Rossiter
March 15th 04, 02:21 AM
Help please! I have messed up my XP Pro so that it will not boot.
In a nutshell, I have caused XP to look for a partition on boot up
which it can not find. Therefore XP can't boot properly and
instead it shuts the PC down.
Here are some more details written in three parts: 'How It
Started'; 'Making More Mess' and 'Solving The Problem'.
Thanks to anyone who can help me.
HOW IT STARTED
While in WinXP Pro I wanted to scan a partition for errors.
I see to recall that I used Windows Explorer -> select drive ->
Properties -> Tools -> Error Checking -> Check Disk. I enabled
auto fix of file system errors. XP said it would perform the task
when I next booted.
I must have changed something (drive letters probably) because when
I boot to XP a message says 'autocheck' is missing and then XP
reboots the PC. I can't get to access the XP partition.
I use three hard drives and have several partitions on each drive.
MAKING MORE MESS
Since the 'autocheck' message I have made a real mess up of the
drive letters. I have cleared the signature in the MBR of two of
the hard drives. This seemed to help on some boots and sometimes I
could actually get into my XP. But to make things worse I then re-
lettered partitions in XP. All in all, it's a mess.
Now when I boot to XP I don't even get to see a message of any sort
but I just get the balck screen with blue chaser and then after a
pause I get a system reboot.
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
I have three ideas to solve this problem:
(1) Can I edit the registry of the problem partition from a spare
XP partition which I can still boot into? Is this actually
possible? If so then I am thinking that I might be able to reset
the registry keys (which ones?) that are telling XP to perform a
checkdisk on some other partition.
(2) Alternatively, would the XP Recovery Console be able to reset
the registry keys for me or do something else to prevent XP looking
for a partition which it can no longer find?
(3) Can I roll back the registry to an earlier version? I do not
normally do manual checkpoints but the system is set to do them
automatically. For better or for worse, I did a manual checkpoint
during all this mess. The problem with this solution may be that I
have tried to reboot something like 10 times. Are the backup
copies of the registry now also ones which will look for a missig
partition?
In a nutshell, I have caused XP to look for a partition on boot up
which it can not find. Therefore XP can't boot properly and
instead it shuts the PC down.
Here are some more details written in three parts: 'How It
Started'; 'Making More Mess' and 'Solving The Problem'.
Thanks to anyone who can help me.
HOW IT STARTED
While in WinXP Pro I wanted to scan a partition for errors.
I see to recall that I used Windows Explorer -> select drive ->
Properties -> Tools -> Error Checking -> Check Disk. I enabled
auto fix of file system errors. XP said it would perform the task
when I next booted.
I must have changed something (drive letters probably) because when
I boot to XP a message says 'autocheck' is missing and then XP
reboots the PC. I can't get to access the XP partition.
I use three hard drives and have several partitions on each drive.
MAKING MORE MESS
Since the 'autocheck' message I have made a real mess up of the
drive letters. I have cleared the signature in the MBR of two of
the hard drives. This seemed to help on some boots and sometimes I
could actually get into my XP. But to make things worse I then re-
lettered partitions in XP. All in all, it's a mess.
Now when I boot to XP I don't even get to see a message of any sort
but I just get the balck screen with blue chaser and then after a
pause I get a system reboot.
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
I have three ideas to solve this problem:
(1) Can I edit the registry of the problem partition from a spare
XP partition which I can still boot into? Is this actually
possible? If so then I am thinking that I might be able to reset
the registry keys (which ones?) that are telling XP to perform a
checkdisk on some other partition.
(2) Alternatively, would the XP Recovery Console be able to reset
the registry keys for me or do something else to prevent XP looking
for a partition which it can no longer find?
(3) Can I roll back the registry to an earlier version? I do not
normally do manual checkpoints but the system is set to do them
automatically. For better or for worse, I did a manual checkpoint
during all this mess. The problem with this solution may be that I
have tried to reboot something like 10 times. Are the backup
copies of the registry now also ones which will look for a missig
partition?