laptop won't boot XP

Dell Latitude D600 w/ XP Pro was running fine.

now won't boot - after the bios loads it goes to the black screen with the blinking cursor in the top left and stays there indefinitely rather than starting to load from the boot drive.

If I boot BartPE from a CD, it starts up, and I can locate the drive and have copied files to/from it with no problem.

I put Partition Master on it and run it, and it finds no partition, so I cannot accomplish anything.

If I boot the XP CD and go to recovery console, and do "fixmbr" it returns the message:
"this computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record....are you sure you want to write a new MBR?"

a "Y" results in "the new master boot record has been successfully written." but no change in the inability to boot.

repeating "fixmbr" results in exactly the same messages as above each time.

"fixboot" reports that the file system is NTFS and results in "the new bootsector was successfully written", but no difference in its inability to boot.

"chkdsk" results in:
"the volume appears to be in good condition and was not checked...."

"chkdsk /p" results in:
"chkdsk is checking the volume.....
chkdsk is performing additional checking or recovery...
chkdsk is performing additional checking or recovery...
chkdsk is performing additional checking or recovery...
xx% completed.
chkdsk found one or more errors on the volume."

"chkdsk /r" results in the same messages as above and then gets to 75%, resets to 50%, works back to 75% and resets again to 50% and seems to be in an infinite loop.

So, how do I fix it?

 

was there a Dell restore partition on the drive?(A blue line at the top of the screen between boot and windows flash screen flashes for 2 sec that says DELL)
Dell has its own MBR programing.
There is a hidden dos partition at the front of the drive and a hidden restore partition at the end of the drive.
By changing the partition MBR you could be trying to boot partition 0 instead of 1
if you can boot to win98 dos or any dos and can run ptedit
you could try setting partiton 0 to 00 and partition 1 to 80 and see if it will boot to the correct partition. if not you will have to fromat the draive and reinstall.

 

I just had a pc with the same problem- and fixboot /fixmbr did exactly the same-
I found that AVG has an updated version 2011, I think it was, with a pc cleanup utility.
I dread people using these tools, as I have seen this happen so many times, as it seems to totally corrupt the registry, and this situation happens. I usually connect the drive to another- like said, here, and copy as much as possible, and re-install everything, as system restore does not seem to work, and repair does not solve it- It may be possible to do something with rh command prompt to replace corrupted files- you need to watch for the last dll to load in safe mode, before it crashes to see what it hangs on, and replace the files -I think one was mui , or, something like that.
Sorry, I don't go deeper than that myself- but it has been done, when important enough, by some.
Perhaps someone else might lead you further , if you still need to.
Good luck- To me AVG , is getting like Norton, and I don't use it any more -I find Comodo far better, personally.

 

I thought I should also say that when a recovery partition is in place, using fixboot/fixmbr , or formatting can make it inaccessible. My advice to anyone who has little time to solve this sort of problem with a laptop, is to recover any important files, by connecting to another computer, and taking copies, and then use the recovery system, to e-install to factory condition, and not to use fixmbr/fixboot.

 

You can try holding down the control button, and pressing f11 on startup- otherwise try control plus f12- as the computer starts-

 

There is no Dell recovery partition - the drive has been replaced in the past. (This drive is less than a year old.)

I have not used any AVG cleanup utility, so the problem did not originate there.

Since I have about a zillion programs on this pc, I'd really, really like to avoid having to rebuild it again.....

Any other ideas? There must be some type of repair program that will actually work....

 

The BartPE CD was able to see the partition and you were able to copy files. So, does the BartPE CD allow you to copy your boot.ini file from C:\? Can you copy and paste the text from that file here in a post? (I'm unfamiliar with BartPE which seems to be Windows based environment so boot.ini may be a hidden file and you would have to somehow select Show Hidden/System files).

Can you give a link to Partition Manager and tell us what you put it on and ran it from--do you mean you put EASEUS partition manager on BartPE and ran it from there?

****
I'm thinking either Partition Wizard as a bootable disc which has a "recover lost partitions option" or Test Disk may give more information about your HD than Partition Manager. Test Disk seems to be available on the Gparted Live CD. Or maybe you could put Test Disk on BartPE and run it from there? Wiki on Test Disk. You might try running through the first few screens (you don't have to commit to anything) just to see what partitions the program finds.

 

O.K - I AM NOT THE BEST AT THIS, BUT I OFTEN USE SFC /SCANNOW- HERE ARE THE OTHER COMMANDS FOR SFC

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

when I use chkdsk, I use the chkdsk /r to check and replace windows files , whereas the /p does not replace them
look at microsofts chkdsk commands for further help, here
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

All the command lines are here, BY CLICKING ON THE LINK AT THE BOTTOM

•
Command-line reference A-Z

I am sorry that I rarely attempt any other, as in my system , I use Hyperos, and have copies of partitions to replace them with all my programs on them, and it makes me very lazy.
Perhaps someone else can give you more help with other command line assists.

 

yes, EASEUS Partition Manager. I copied it onto the drive after booting with BartPE, and then installed it and ran it from c:

I can boot BartPE and find boot.ini on the c: drive - here it is:

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows="1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

I am quite certain that the "windows="1"" portion of that was just added when I tried to repair windows as part of my recovery attempts.

I just downloaded the bootable CD of Partition Wizard and will try that as soon as I get a chance (after work today).


EDIT:
I finally got chkdsk /r to run all the way through. it made no difference in the computer's inability to boot.

 

OK, so I booted Partition Wizard, and it finds the partition, active and primary.

partition id - 0x7
file system - ntfs
first physical sector - 63
last physical sector - 488392064
total physical size - 232.88 gb

sectors per cluster - 8 (4096 bytes)
sectors per file record - 2 (1024 bytes)
sectors per index record - 8 (4096 bytes)
$mft lcn - 786432
$mftmirr lcn - 30524500

all of the above looks okay to me.

HOWEVER,
When I try to "set windows boot partition" it reports "failed to find windows directory"
BUT when I "explore" the partition, the "windows" directory is there and I can drill down through it and see everything.

this would seem to be the issue - where is the pointer missing and how do I get it corrected?

 

The boot.ini looks okay to me. The fact that it has two entries and you aren't getting a choice of which one to start(even though they are the same) at a boot loader screen says to me the problem has to be before boot.ini is loaded.

I haven't run XP in about a year so I will have to think about the problem. I'll take a look at TestDisk and Recovery Console to see which commands are available.

 

Where do you find the above option? Is this in partition wizard?

I think I would try to use Partition Wizard to Check Files on partition C: and then to Rebuild the MBR on Disk 1. Rebuilding the MBR won't effect your files.

I realize you have done both of these in Recovery Console but I would try using PW.

On Edit: One thing you should be doing is having no USB devices attached to the laptop as they can interfere with boot sometimes..

 

no usb devices attached at this time, the pc will not boot when docked or undocked.

In Partition Wizard, under Partition heading, there is a "Set Windows Boot Partition" selection. that is what I attempted in my previous post.

I do not see a "Check Files" option. There is a "Check File System" option, but it is grayed out, so I cannot select it. why would that be?

"Rebuild MBR" did not change the machine's inability to boot.

 

I really don't have any new ideas.

The Check File System may be greyed out if you have not highlighted the C: partition in the graph first before trying to use it. Try highlighting the partition then see if the option is available.

I believe TestDisk may write its own version of MBR that may be slightly different than a Microsoft MBR. It might be worth a try since recovery console did indicate something might be wrong with the MBR.

 

I see you are still trying to fix this, but as I said, I am nit the best at this- Sach2 has gone so far, but my personal knowledge is limited on this part of system, however, this link might help using bootcfg
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980/EN-US/
I don't like to lead you away from majorgeeks, but as it is important to you, and I cannot say anything from my personal experience..........It would be useful information, if no more than show you what should be there, and perhaps lead you further,
http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/bootini.htm
The other file fixing method that I suggested trying ,When trying a repair option with your windows disc, was sfc /scannow, when the C:/ Prompt flashes.

 

Gparted shows the partition as /dev/sda1, ntfs, and flagged as boot.

Check and repair file system using Gparted made no difference in its inability to boot. It reported that all operations successfully completed, and did not report any errors found.

I did a physical scan of the disk (using Partition Wizard) and found no errors at all, so I think the disk is physically fine.

when I boot to the XP CD, it will not allow me to run 'sfc' - it reports that is not a recognized command. even if I change to the 'system32' directory and attempt to run it, it will not.

 

Sorry about that sfc - its so long since I went deep into the recovery console, that I misled you- here is microsofts run down on the commands you can use, and what the do.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314058

The proper chkdsk command for repair as it checks was
chkdsk drive /p /r

 

I had a look around, but I have not used this myself, -just a chance it could work on your boot ini problem
http://www.h-desk.com/articles/Resolution_for_Invalid_boot_ini_file_a25_f0.html

 

Folks,

I want to share something with you.

In the past 4 days, I have had 3 customers call me with this exact issue.

When i asked them all what was the last thing they did before the computer rebooted into the Blinking screen, they all said the same thing.

They said that I just went to www.drudgereport.com.

I don't know if that website is infected or just a link off of it. But something is going on with that site.

The first two customers, I had to completely rebuild their machines. Their data was fine, but the drives wouldn't boot. None of my scan programs found any viruses or boot sector viruses either.

I have even tried some bootable cd's that look for boot sector viruses.

Did any of you go to the same website by chance, and did you click on anything?

Thanks,

Silentman

 

no trips to drudgereport.com ever on that machine, so that's not it.

I built a bootable CD w/ AVG and scanned the drive - no problems reported.

still struggling with this - I divided the drive into 2 partitions using Partition Wizard, and duplicated the original data on the 2nd partition. Then, I attempted to reinstall Windows XP on the original partition. When loading XP, at the time that the machine does the first reboot, it hangs with the same black screen.

Is there any other problem besides a damaged mbr, a damaged partition, or a damaged ntldr that would cause the data to be fine, but the drive not boot?

I have repaired the mbr with several programs with no results. I have checked the partition with several programs and they all say its fine. Reinstalling Windows should load a new ntldr. What else is there???

 

Installing a clean xp on a new partition will not give you access to the programs as the regestry is not the same and the programs are keyed to the regestry.

I think your going to have to recover the data from the programs through a data recovery solution and then clean boot the system and reinstall the software.

At that point make a recovery DVD set or flash drive recovery option to iage the drive once your software is installed then you would just have to restore to the image if you have trouble in the future.

I use a 3 partition system simmular to dells with a dos ,windows,and data partition on one drive.

I can help you build this option if you like.

 

I've been thinking about this and thought the MBR may not be the problem. From what I can see Recovery Console seems to throw up an invalid MRB message automatically when you run fixmbr. I tried it on an old computer with XP and got the non-standard MBR message even though I was not having any problems.

I'm thinking some hardware problem may be keeping BIOS from going through its normal sequence. That laptop only has a DVDROM (which works)--no floppy or media card reader? Nothing that could be not working as far as peripherals that you know of?

You have all your data backed up to the second partition. When trying to install XP on the first partition are you opting to format and start fresh? If so have you tried deleting the first partition so that you have unallocated space and letting the installer create a new partition using the unallocated space? [You can do that within the installer on the screen asking where you want to install XP by using the "D" option to delete an existing partition. You want to be sure to delete the first partition not the second. You would then get the option to install on unallocated space.] It may be worth a try since that would rewrite the partition table and the MBR.

*******
One note: I have been playing with TestDisk a bit and looked at several options. A few posts back I had mentioned that that may be a program to try and that it was included on the Gparted CD. You later posted that you had used Gparted but did you ever try TestDisk which is a different program available on that CD but has to be started using the Terminal icon and command-line input? I'm not saying that it would be a better choice than attempting installing XP on a second partition but I think it may still be an option for gathering information if you haven't used it yet.

 

The Gparted boot disk that I made does not seem to have a TestDisk on it, so I used what I could find on it. I get basically the same information back regarding the disk from all of the utilities I have tried.

I also found the MS documentation that the 'non-standard mbr' message sometimes occurs and is to be ignored, so I assumed that was not my problem.

I did not reformat the partition when I reloaded - I just reinstalled into the current partition. I guess that if the partition is damaged that would not work, so the next step will be to reformat and/or delete/recreate partition during the install. I will try that next.

This laptop has only a CDRW/DVDROM, no floppy. The bios allows boot to a usb device, and I tried rearranging the boot priority, but have not yet tried booting to a usb device because I cannot find the utility I need to format the usb drive to be bootable - do you know where I can find that? (I had a link to an HP tool, but the link is expired and I cannot find it searching HP's site.)

btw, I have also tried booting the laptop both docked and undocked, and there is no difference in how it gets stuck.

 

If you haven't reformatted your first partition you could try doing a non-destructive repair http://www.informationweek.com/news...UNN2JVN?articleID=189400897&_requestid=164475. Making sure to pick the original Windows installation.

I don't want to waste too much of your time going down blind alleys but it may be worth a try. I'm still concerned that the laptop didn't reboot properly during your last attempt and am thinking it may be something other than software. I haven't seen any threads about your model that point to a common hardware problem but am going to look a bit more.

Let me know if during the repair or attempted new installation your laptop hangs again on reboot.

I haven't used a USB installation of Windows before but this link comes up first on google. http://wintoflash.com/home/en/

 

tried to reformat the partition and reinstall Windows before I saw your most recent post - it hangs at the same spot during the first reboot of the install.

Is it possible that the bios is corrupted? should I try to upgrade that?

 

I was just looking around and I still can't find anything specific.

My current thought which is same as yours is to check the BIOS. There is only one upgrade for BIOS and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with this problem. I would suggest setting your current BIOS to defaults. See what happens on trying to boot. [At this point you don't have Windows on the first partition but you would get an error message like "No OS found" or such]

If you still get the blinking cursor then I would try to remove everything from the boot order except HD. (What does your boot order currently have listed F12 at the DELL splash screen?)

 

Ruby, there is something you really should consider at this point.

1. You can boot it with BartPE, and thus, you could offload your files to another external HD.
2. You've spent a ton of time on this already, and are getting nowhere. Now is the time where you have to weigh continued troubleshooting against getting your stuff off the machine and reformatting and reinstalling Windows.

Personally, I would choose number 2 here. But before you do, I would run all memory and HDD diagnostics in your BIOS to make sure those things are working fine.

 

Hi motc7,

I agree with doing the BIOS diagnostics.

The current problem is that although RubyDist has copied the data to a separate partition the attempt at installing Windows is leading to the same blinking cursor. [After the installation copies files and attempts to reboot it leads to the blinking cursor] We can't get a fresh install of Windows to work. Something is preventing the laptop from starting from the HD properly. I believe once you go through the first step of the installation process a new partition table and MBR have been written so I don't see how reformatting the whole disk will make any difference. Installing a copy of XP on blank space on a HD should be entirely possible independent of whether or not the whole HD has been formatted.

I agree that wiping the whole disk might eliminate one possible cause but at this point I think it would just end up with a completely empty disk and a blinking cursor when Windows installation tries to reboot.

 

When I hit F12, here is the boot order list:
internal hdd
cd/dvd drive
cardbus nic
onboard nic
diagnostics

(diagnostics all pass, btw)

BUT,
when I go into bios setup, this is the boot order that is displayed:
diskette drive
cd/dvd drive
usb storage device
internal hdd
and the following are not enabled:
modular bay hdd
cardbus nic
d/dock pci slot nic
onboard nic

this strikes me as being related to my problem. however, I'm not clear on how to proceed from here.

btw, bios version is A14.

 

In BIOS setup try turning off/disabling diskette,CD and USB. (Instuctions for toggling the options should be at bottom of screen --usually space bar or an arrow) You want to change from Auto/ON to OFF for those three devices. Then try to boot. See if you get the blinking cursor or a No OS or Insert System Disk message.

You can always re-enable them but we can eliminate them as halting boot.

 

I turned off everything except the hdd, no change in its failure to boot, although it did only try to boot from the hdd.

I turned on several different combinations of boot order, no change in its failure to boot.

 

It doesn't look like changing the Boot Options is making any difference. I had just remembered a case where some Toshiba laptops were getting stuck at a blinking cursor because the DVD drive had gone bad and not been replaced. Usually POST would just ignore the device and go on to the next one in the list but for some reason that bad DVDROM would halt POST. Detaching the drive let the laptop boot fine. I was thinking that maybe the floppy or USB options was causing the problem.

Two things. One is maybe it would be worth opening the memory door on the bottom and just giving any memory modules a push to make sure they are snug.

The other is have you tried deleting the first partition during install so you have a choice of installing to unallocated space? (I believe you already formatted that partition during a previous attempt so any data is already gone--correct?)

 

One other thought: How big is the HD? What was the size of the original partition? And roughly (in GB) how much space was being used in the original partition?

 

the drive is 232GB, I now have 2 partitions of 116GB w/ a little spare unallocated and the data on the drive is about 32GB.

I deleted the first partition and re-created it w/ Windows during the install and I still get the blinking cursor during the first reboot during the install.

I have done memory tests w/ the various utilities several times and they always pass.

 

I've been reading about many people that had problems with the 137GB limit on that laptop. Apparently, there was never a BIOS update that addressed the issue because updates ended about the time laptop HDs were limited to about 100gb.

The answers aren't definitive but enough people have attributed their blinking cursor to the 137GB limit that I think it could be an issue. Many said their machines had been working fine for several months before the issue arose.

Now, I'm not sure why XP wouldn't load on the current 116gb partition. That may be that it has to have the whole drive blank to be installed and once installed it allows more partitions to be added. I'd have to read up about that.

When you first split the drive into two partitions was the first one below 137GB? I realize the new one is 116GB but was the old one 116gb or was it larger than 137gb?

My thought is to clone your data from partition 2 back to the new partition 1 and see if it will boot at 116gb.

 

Here is the basic thread I am going from and it makes the most sense on the suddenness of the problem. http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/18751106.aspx?PageIndex=1

If you clone the data back to partition 1 and can't boot then I would try a repair install on partition 1 and see if it boots. (If at some point your boot data was moved above the 137gb limit it may have been damaged and a repair might be able to get things working again)

 

Originally, the whole 232GB was one partition. I was not aware of any size limitation on the drive, or would have built it smaller to begin with.

After splitting it, i have messed with trying to recover the first partition w/o any success, including deleting that partition and creating a new 116GB one and attempting to install Windows there. it still hangs at the first reboot. (see post 34)

 

Working on the assumption that the 137gb limitation is causing this problem, we really only have the choice of trying to repair your Windows installation on the first partition. I believe that Windows will only install on a disk larger than 137gb in that laptop if there is only one partition and it can assume it is 137gb until install is complete. You have backed up your data to a second partition that can not be deleted unless you save an image of it to another HD.

So, the work-around I can see would be to copy the second partition back to the first partition (keeping both sets of data) and then try to fix the first partition that is now less than 137GB.

With all the files for XP copied back on partition 1 you could once again try to use fixmbr on this smaller partition which I don't think you have tried since you shrunk the partition and before formatting. If it doesn't work you could try the non destructive repair. (Although I am not sure that it will reboot properly)

I'll think a bit more in case I am missing something that might be more full proof than the non destructive repair. Worst case scenario is non-destructive doesn't reboot properly and you have to delete that partition and recopy partition 2 to a new empty partition 1.

 

ok, so I copied the original data from the 2nd partition back to the first, so I should have 2 copies of exactly what the machine had when it quit booting.

then I attempted to do the 'non-destructive repair' you reference above (which I tried prior to this also, with no success) and now I am getting a new message:
"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
please re-install a copy of the above file."

Manually copying that from the 2nd partition and rebooting results in a complaint regarding ntoskrnl.exe being corrupt.

Manually copying that from the 2nd partition does not solve my problem - apparently that file is corrupt on both partitions.

Can anyone tell me what file on the Windows XP setup disk to expand to get a clean copy of that file?

 

It should be in the i386 folder. Try expand (XPCD drive letter):\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ c:\windows\system32

 

Finally making a little progress, but not there yet.....

To review, I divided the 232Gb drive into 2 116Gb partitions, and cloned the original data to the 2nd partition. I have preserved the original data on the 2nd partition and have been trying to repair/rebuild the 1st partition. No luck with any of the following: XP reinstall disk, Partition Wizard, gnome partition editor, or AVG bootable scan.

I found TestDisk and used that to repair the mbr on the first partition, and the I was able to reinstall XP on the 1st partition - that installed normally and boots fine. However, TestDisk does not seem to want to write a mbr for the 2nd partition, so I am still stuck with all those applications on partition2 that I cannot use.

Now that I have confirmed that there is some file / file structure issue on the 2nd partition, what do I do to fix it? What other utility is there that is smarter / more powerful than these? Or do I just not know how to use it?

 

I think if the 137gb limit caused the original problem you may have difficulty getting partition 2 to boot. The reason being that the first 116gb of your drive is partition 1. So partition 2 starts at 117gb and all the Windows system files would have to be located before 137gb. You already have 32gb of files on partition 2; so it would seem that any changes you make to partition 2 would be written at 117gb +32gb= 149gb+.

You might get lucky with a combination of defragging and partition moving and System file replacing. [My choice at first glance and not knowing if it is possible would be to shrink your new XP installation to 10gb. The might not be possible part create a new partition of 100gb and copy the data from partition 2 to the 100gb partition. (This would involve finding a partition copy software that would ignore free space on the source drive; allowing the destination partition to be smaller than the source). The benefit would be that you would have a partition with the somewhat corrupt data from partition 2 under the 137gb limit and still maintain an unaltered copy. Then you could work on this new 100gb partition slowly replacing copies of necessary boot files from your working XP to this partition until you got a basic boot into Windows to evaluate what is going on.]

Think on the above and let me know what you were thinking.

BTW, there is only one MBR on a HD so there isn't any way of having a separate one written for partition 2. Any necessary reference to partition 2 should already be there.

One question I have is does the new XP see the second partition? If not in My Computer as a lettered drive; then does it see it in Computer Management?
Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>in the left pane Disk Management It should show up in the graph.

If it shows up as a drive letter the boot.ini could be edited to make it a boot choice and then to attempt to fix the system files but you may run into the 137gb limit problem.

 

Yes, the new XP sees the 2nd partition and appears to read the files just fine using Windows Explorer and Disk Management shows both partitions as 'healthy'.

So, do you think I could wipe out the 1st partition, copy the 2nd partition to the 1st (using something like Partition Wizard), and use TestDisk to repair the mbr and/or partition table again and get that to boot from the 1st partition?

 

Yes, I think that is one possibility but right now you have a full set of working XP files made specifically for that model computer. That is why I was thinking it would be advantageous to save that new install at a smaller size. You could copy working files from it to the partition that you were trying to boot. The hope being that it is only a few files that are damaged on Partition 2 and specifically that the registry files are OK.

I don't think you should shrink partition 2 no matter what you do just to avoid any possible damage.

I can't read through partition software guides tonight. I will think things over and see if I can find another option.

I think if you don't mind spending the time an option would be to delete the new XP. Copy partition 2 to partition 1. See if partition wizard would shrink that partition to 100gb. That would leave 16 gb unpartitioned space to install a small version of XP for fresh system files. (There is a possibility that further corruption could occur to the files on the 100gb because we can't defragment before shrinking but it is only a copy and may be worth a try) In reality probably as good a chance of success as my original idea.

At this point I don't believe there should be any need to work with the MBR anymore. Partition Wizard or any partitioning software you use should be able to handle that automatically.

 

So I copied partition 2 to partition 1, shrank partition 1 to 100Gb and created a new partition 3 of 16Gb where I installed XP clean.

P3 boots fine. If sees the other 2 partitions and appears to read files okay. Disk Management reports all 3 partitions as 'healthy'.

P2 will not boot, it reports that it is missing hal.dll, if I rename that and replace it with a good one, it still has the same complaint.

P1 will not boot, it reports the following:
"Windows could not start because of an error in the software.
Please report this problem as :
load needed DLLs for kernel.
Please contact your support person to report this problem."

Microsoft says this is due to a mismatched hal.dll and ntoskrnl - so I expanded them off the XP cd, renamed the existing ones and copied in the new ones. I got the same message upon reboot.

Any ideas now?

 

Just to be sure the partitions are on the disk as 100(so #1) then 116(#2) then 16(#3)? I want to be sure that they are not layed out like 100 then 16 then 116. It is important because the boot.ini for each partition should point to the correct location.

I think we should only concentrate on getting partition 1 to boot.

How are switching between trying to boot the three partitions-Are you getting a boot manager screen with the three options?

What does the boot.ini look like for the new XP?

 

I'm going to bed. I'll try to read up on the load dll's for kernel error.

I've only read the Microsoft page and this post http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/load-needed-dlls-for-kernel/133655.html. They seem to be completely different answers. The second post (from 2005) only has two things that I would think would be of value: bootcfg which is just editing boot.ini which can be done in Notepad. And fixboot that I'd like to know exactly what it does before trying it although I am thinking that the boot sector for that partition could have been corrupted. But I am unsure if there is only one bootsector on a HD rather than one for each partition. I try to avoid fixmbr because I don't think the Microsoft version works most of the time.

 

yes, P1 is the 100Gb, shrunk w/ original data, P2 is the 116Gb, with original data, and P3 is the 16Gb with the new load of XP Pro. physically, they reside in this order: 100,16,116 on the disk.

I have edited boot.ini to give me 2 options, which I currently have set to boot either 1 or 3. (For some reason, if I try to add the 3rd option, it won't save it that way - I was using the editor in Partition Wizard.)

currently, boot.ini looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional p1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional p3" /fastdetect

The only place that boot.ini, config.sys, io.sys, msdos.sys, ntdetect.com and ntldr appear is in the root folder on the c: drive, which is partition 1. Since XP boots properly to P3, that tells me that those files are okay. This suggests that the issue is some file or file structure issue in P1 beyond the root folder. This is consistent with the message that I get in Partition Wizard that it "cannot find WINDOWS" if I try to set P1 as the windows boot partition.

I wonder if I should try to defrag P1??? If so, using which defrag utility?

 

The MBR sets the boot partition at startup in my setup.
I have 3 partitions
partition 1 or (0) is a dos partition setup as a DE type or Dell Utility partition
This makes the partition only visiable to the disk manager in XP.
Partition 2 or (1) is the xp partition type 07 or ntfs which is set to boot 80
the last is the recovery image partition also set to hidden.
by changing the boot from 00 to 80 any of the partitons can be booted from as long as none of the other partitons are set to 80 as well only one can be set as bootable.

not sure but just repairing the mbr and placing a standerd mbr in the record might not be accounting for the posistion of the accual partition you want to boot to.

PTEDIT

 

From what I read here at Wiki, there is a separate boot sector for each partition. So signing in to the first partition using Recovery Console and doing a fixboot may be helpful.

I again think staying clear of fixMBR might be wise for now. (I may be wrong) Pattyanme's program is new to me. I think the MBR is understanding you are trying to boot from partition 1 but once control is sent to partition 1 Windows is not executing correctly.

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Before using fixboot I would backup the Windows\System folder on partition 1. The System folder holds the registry information and changes with every boot. So having a copy before any semi-successful boot would be a good thing to keep an unchanged copy of the registry for that partition with all your program information. [Sign in to XP (p3) and copy partiton 1 Windows\System to Windows\System1. Then try the fixboot in Recovery Console. Then try and boot partition 1 again.

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My basic goal here is to get Windows to boot a bit further to see how many missing/corrupted files there may be. In other words if we can get past the "load kernel dlls" message does it keep spitting out specific files that are missing or corrupt.

Oh, and I guess a chkdsk /r on partition 1 while in RC couldn't hurt just to make sure we are working from a error free copy of the partition. In case, we any errors occured during recent copying.