Fix Boot Problem From Another Computer(windows xp)

I was having trouble with my computer at startup, it was running checkdisk everytime at startup. I chose to restore my computer to a time before i installed the tiger woods 2008 game. During the system restore the system hung for 15 minutes so i had to turn the power off on the computer. I have not been able to boot windows xp pro since. I have tried fix mbr,fix boot, I tried to repair but I don't have the option to when I get past the windows setup screen. I hooked the hard drive up to a working vista computer, and can see the hard drive contents. I need to know what kind of diagnostic software will allow me to fix the hard drive in this manner. Thank you in advance.

 

Did you try to start up in safe mode?? Think its f8 when you start windows?? If no luck there you may only have 2 options. Reload Xp or your harddrive may be going bad. Hope that helps.

 

I tried to start in safe mode,and no dice. I was looking for software to diagnose the boot problem,and fix it while the hard drive is in another computer. I can temporarily copy the hard drive to an external one I guess.I am looking to exhaust all options before doing a format and reinstall.

 

If you are looking to check the drive for errors you could get the diagnostic utility from the manufacturer's website (Seagate/Maxtor or Western Digital) and run it from Vista to check the XP drive. It would look for bad sectors and try to fix them.

Were you getting any error messages trying to boot the XP drive after the failed restore? Form Vista can you get a directory listing including hidden files for the root of the XP drive. Looking for ntdlr, ntdetect.COM and boot.ini making sure they exist. Something like dir X:\ /ah

 

I checked the drive and it appears to have all the essential files.I guess I will have to reinstall all my programs again. Thanks for your help. I will not see the light of day for 2days,lol.