laptop won't boot XP

ptedit is a small utility program included with partition magic it comes in both a windows and dos exe.
It accualy is a MBR editor.
ive attached them in a zip file if your intrested but be carful if you change the boot partition and cant boot then you will have bad feelings tword me.
i usualy boot to dos when i have problems and then change the settings back with the dos pteditor .
This can screw things up if you dont understand it and change the wrong thing....... Use caution or you may have to reinstall xp to recover!!!!!

In the very least you can see what the settings are in the mbr and not change anything

 

I was just thinking in order to boot from any partition it must be made a boot primary partition not an extended partition or other ........

 

Hi pattandme,

You may be right but I think XP can boot off an extended partition. The boot files are just put in the first partition. So if you install two XPs on two primary partitions each has its own boot.ini, ntdetect ect. If you install one of the XPs on an extended partition you get only one set of boot.ini, ntdetect, hall.dll etc. Installing on two Primary partitions is ideal because they will each work independent of each other. This situation is less than ideal.

Take a look at this which seems to follow my logic. The MBR is passing control over to the partition (either 1 or 3 in this case) and then (c) or (d) or (e) is not happening for partition 1 but they are woriking for partition 3 (the new XP).

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm

 

yes I use a dos MBR utility to change the partition table at boot if i want to change the boot os rather then a 3rd party boot manager.


mbr hdnum [/RESET] [/ZERO] [/DEL] [/INSTALL] [/REBOOT]

hdnum Hard drive number whose MBR will be acted on (0-15).

/RESET Used in combination with MBR code installed with SELM below.

/ZERO Set the entire MBR to zero (deletes all MBR partitions).

/DEL Delete all partitions in MBR.

/INSTALL Install MBR code using the follow addtional parameters:

[STD] [SEL to fkey "msg"] [SELM to fkey "msg" fsid fsidhid]

STD Install standard MBR code.
SEL Install MBR code that will display 'msg' and boot a hidden
FAT/FAT32 partition if 'fkey' is pressed within 'to' seconds.
The ondisk MBR is not modified.
SELM Install MBR code that will display 'msg' and boot a partition
with a file system id of 'fsidhid' if 'fkey' is pressed within
'to' seconds. The MBR is modifed so that the partition is marked
active and the file system is changed to 'fsid'. To reset the
MBR back to the prior settings, use the /RESET switch before
modifying the MBR again.

/REBOOT Reboot the computer after the selected action is carried out.


Additional usage notes:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* If the /INSTALL SEL or /INSTALL SELM command parameters are to be used,
there must be one and only one partition available that matches. For example,
the /INSTALL SEL command parameters cause a hidden FAT/FAT32 partition to be
booted from, if the defined F-key is pressed. If there is more than one
hidden FAT/FAT32 partition, however, the F-key defined by the /INSTALL SEL
command parameters will not work.

* If the /INSTALL SELM command parameters are used, the /RESET command should
be run when the alternate partition is booted from. This will reset the MBR
to its previous configuration.


Examples of use:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

mbr 1 /zero

MBR.EXE will write zeros to the MBR of hard drive 1. Note: Hard drive
1 is the SECOND hard drive, since these numbers start at 0.

and so on
dont want to post the entire instruction set

 

backed up \system as suggested.

from recovery console, I ran fixboot. then I ran chkdsk /r. there was no difference in the message I got when trying to boot partition 1.

then I used Windows defrag tool and ran defrag on partition 1. there is no difference in how it behaves.

partition 3 still boots properly.

this suggests to me that the mbr is fine, but that the volume boot record or part of the file structure of partition 1 is corrupted. is this what you are thinking?

 

We know that many individual files are damaged. In particular we know that files necessary to boot are damaged. I don't think the Volume Boot Record is damaged because you can access all the files from the working partition. The VBR is just a list of files and their locations, if you can get to a file from the working XP partition than the VBR would seem to be ok.

My understanding of the the 137gb limit is that BIOS misreports the size of the HD; so when you have one large XP partition, as you originally did of ~232gb, BIOS misrepresents that and when any file is written to HD to space above the 137GB limit it wraps around and XP begins writing the file to the beginning of the disk overwriting existing files thinking it is writing to free space at the end of the disk while not getting any error messages that it is doing damage. So any or many different files can have been corrupted. I fear that numerous necessary Windows files are damaged.

To be honest, I think we are hoping against hope of getting the corrupted partitions to work again. [You can access your personal files to back up. Do you really have programs that can't be reinstalled more easily than trying to fix a rather corrupted OS?]

I'm willing to work with you to try to find an answer but I am beginning think the original XP installation is never going to work the way it did before corruption.

 

OK, so here is what I accomplished tonight:

On partition 1, I copied the WINDOWS directory to WINDOWS2. Then I copied the files from the WINDOWS directory on partition 3 into WINDOWS2 on partition 1. Then I renamed WINDOWS to WINDOWSOLD and renamed WINDOWS2 to WINDOWS on partition 1.

Then I attempted to boot to partition 1. it now starts to boot and stops with the bsod and this message:
C0000218 Registry file failure......
and it complains about one of the following files being corrupt, missing or not writeable:
...system32\config\SECURITY
...system32\config\SAM
...system32\config\SOFTWARE

attempting to boot safe mode has the same result. the files are there, but apparently corrupt. copying them from the WINDOWSOLD directory does not help. I don't know enough of under the covers on XP to know what they should look like or how to fix them.

thoughts at this point?

 

This one sounds like a candidate for a repair install of WinXP ?

Are you willing to try that ?

 

Hi, I think you might have a problem because you have changed the Windows/system32 folder which contains those registry files. So I think you will need to copy System32 from WINDOWSOLD to WINDOWS on partition 1 an see if any change in the boot. [Specifically Windows(old)\System32\config contains the registry files. WINDOWS(old)\repair might also hold a copy]

Later, you could also try reading through this article http://www.aitechsolutions.net/winxpnoboot.html#rstxp2boot which explains where you can find alternate copies of those files. They are registry files so you have to find the replacements on partition 1 (WINDOWSOLD). The files of the same name on partition 3 will not contain any information about the programs installed on partition 1 and can't be used.

MS source for replacing SYSTEM, SOFTWARE, SAM files. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

It is a rather confusing procedure. Some people have success with it.

 

I guess at first you could try just replacing the Windows\System32\config files with the ones fromWindowsold\System32\config file and see if that works rather than replacing the whole System32 folder.

 

Part of the difficulty is that when I boot the XP reinstall disk, and attempt to do a repair install, it only finds the partition3 windows installation - it does not see the partition1 or partition2 windows. However, if I go to repair console, it finds all 3. :confused

I will read through the MS repair/replace documents you provided later tonight, and see if I can get it repaired. I've already tried to copy those files from the 'windowsold' directory with no success - they apparently were corrupted as part of my original problem here.

 

I wonder if using Partition Wizard to hide partitions 2 and 3 would make a difference in whether or not repair install would acknowledge partition 1?

The problem with corruption is that files are rarely all together on one part of the HD. So one tiny file could actually be spread out all over the drive. Any byte of information that becomes corrupted potentially makes the whole file inoperable. So even if only a very small percentage of the HD was overwritten because the BIOS was misreporting the size of the drive it could effect thousands of files.

If you look at those articles you will see that there may be additional copies of those files in System Volume Information in separate System Restore folders. This depends on whether or not system restore was set to on. If it was there may be many copies in those RP#\snapshot folders.

 

The files in the copy can still refrance the other drive when they are on the exsisting drive.

 

ok, so I finally got a chance to work on this again.

I put the default files of 'system', 'software', 'sam', 'default', and 'security' on, per the MS instructions and got it to boot partition1. Now, I'm trying to see if any of the backup files are intact, so I can restore the machine to approximately where it was before it died. unfortunately, the 'system volume information' directory is empty, so they don't exist in the most valuable location, but I have some more searching to do to see if any other versions exist. it may yet be that I just have to rebuild the whole thing.

 

Hi,

You were able to access System Volume Information? Because it is a super hidden folder and if you just mouse over it without changing security settings it will show as empty.

You may have done all the steps in the MS article but I will just paste them in this reply.

You have XP Pro so you have to go to Control Panel>Folder Options>View tab and last thing in the list disable Simple File Sharing. Go to My Computer, right-click on the drive letter for partition 1 and select Properties. On the Security tab click Add and enter your username hit OK to exit. Then try opening System Volume Information.

 

I was able to get to the System Volume Information, but everything I could access was corrupted in some way, so I just bit the bullet today and reinstalled the software on Partition3 and am using it again. Turns out some of the data is corrupt, but nearly all I've accessed so far is good, so I'm in business again.

Thanks for all your assistance!

 

Sorry, your persistence didn't pay off. I guess my unhappy years with Win98 inured me to having to bite the bullet and start over once in a while. You can be assured you tried every option out there.

I think you should be working off a fresh install on partition 1 (limited to under 128gb) to make sure you never have the problem of your system partition overwriting itself again. When you are ready to say farewell to your old installations you can delete or reformat those partitions and use them for large files (music video pictures) and anything else you want to keep safe.

Good Luck!

 

Yup... WinToFlash is a very cool tool. I have a windows install that runs off USB using that tool. Its easy to use too.