WinXP Broken

I have had a look around the forum, but I have not found an answer to my problem.

I have an eMachines desktop from a friend, which will not boot. When I boot it off a WinXP CD, to attempt a repair it, it appears that the file system, which was of course NTFS, is now not recognised. I have booted off an Ubuntu CD and I am able to browse the HDD and read files off it. I intend to backup the stuff that is important to an external HDD. Is it possible to repair the partition(s) on the HDD? I am fairly competent, but would no way call myself an expert. Is it the FAT or MBR that has become corrupted? I have downloaded "Parted Magic" but have not run it yet, is this tool suitable for what i want to do, or are there other tools that would do the job?

I don't really want to reinstall XP, with having all the hassle of locating and install drivers etc, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

It keeps on going back to the eMachines splash page. I have tried booting in safe mode but same result, just goes into an endless loop.

 

Please describe exactly what you see on screen when you try to boot. Emachines splash screen then what?

Also when you boot off the XP CD what happens? Why do you think it is a partition problem or how do you know the file system is not recognized?

 

Thanks for your replies. I will set up machine again tomorrow and post exactly what happens. Although your questions have made me think a bit about what I've posted. I think it starts to to boot into windows, stops and goes back to the splash page, but I will verify in the am. When I do attempt to do an XP repair install (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/operatingsystems/ss/instxprepair1.htm), I am prompted to format the partition as the file system is not recognised. There is a small EXT Ubuntu partition on the HDD also.

As I've said I will be a bit more exact tomorrow.

Cheers
Pete

 

OK I've had another crack at it.

When I fire it up........I get a OS choices screen (there are two XP OS on this drive, If I chose the default option I get from 1: onwards.

1: Slash Screen

2: Boot Options (Safe Mode, Normal ETC)

3: Windows XP Boot Screen

4: After about eighteen seconds it returns to 1:

If I chose the second option on the OS choices screen, I get the XP boot screen and the Blue Screen after a few seconds.

When I boot off the XP disc, it it proceeds as normal until I get the "Windows XP Pro Setup" screen.

in the list of partitions I get the following.

C: Partition1 [Unknown] 73759 MB < 73795 MB free>
D: Partition2 <OS> [FAT32] 2385 MB < 2379 MB free>
J: Partition3 [Unknown] 173 MB < 172 MB free>

As far as I am aware, the HDD was originally formatted to NTFS.
Partition2 Has Ubuntu on it, although it does not show up as an OS choice when I boot. I assume it has been overwritten by a later XP install?

When I select a partition to do an install on I am prompted to format it because it is "full, damaged, not formatted, or formatted with an incomparable file system".

I hope this helps to inform you what's going on.

I have backed up the HDD, so if I have to "experiment" I have nothing to loose apart from a few hours loading a new OS, drivers, programs etc.

Thanks in anticipation
Pete

 

Any further thoughts on this please?

 

The person who's computer it is, knows how to swithch it on, surf the WWW and use Open Office, so whatever has happened is not because he's been "fiddling".

Although Partition C appears to be empty, when I boot in Ubuntu, I see over 50Gbyte of data there. Partition D has the Ubuntu OS on it. J is just an empty partition.

I am going to have to return the machine to my friend soon, and I think I'll re-install the XP on a new HDD, and put up with grief of customising it so he knows where everything is.

Could the HDD be damaged? Before it failed completely he was getting the Blue Screen, quite often and being prompted to run a disc check when he started the machine.

Thanks anyhow.

 

Sorry, I haven't got back to this thread. It looks to me that maybe it is just Windows that is having problems seeing that 70 gb partition. I put Ubuntu on a USB flash drive, let me boot into it and see whether it has Gparted or TestDisk installed. One of those may help figure out what is going on with that 70gb partition. I'll post back shortly.

 

I hate Ubuntu--I always have problems with that version of Linux.

Go ahead and run Gparted and see what it says about your partitions.

I'm assuming you are running Ubuntu 11.10 (latest version). Click on the top icon that is a circle with some dots. Choose More Apps. Type gparted in the search box. When the gparted icon shows up click it to start the program.
It should show your partitions--what does it say about the 70gb C: partition as far as its filesystem type? How much does it say is used and unused?

 

OK thank you all for your input.

Last night I installed XP on a new HDD. I then connected the old drive and booted to the new one. During the boot sequenece I was prompted to do a disc check. I left it do do its thing and it found loads of problems on the old HDD. Windows and I was eventually started and I able to access the old HDD. I then changed the boot order in the BIOS and re-booted to the original OS on the old HDD, and all was well.

I am sure there must be some other tools I could have used to repair the damaged file structure, but I got there in the end, all be it by a bit of a torturous route.

I don't know if or how to close the thread, but thank you all for your help.

 

I'm glad you got it all sorted.

I'm unsure how thorough a disk check it does automatically. You may want to boot to the new installation with the old HD connected. Then go to My Computer and right-click the old HD's C:/XP drive letter and select Properties. Then on the Tools tab choose Error checking and tick both boxes and hit the Ok button. This would scan the whole old XP partition for bad sectors and move any files it can to good ones if any bad sectors are found. It is probably worth the extra time just to ensure the problem wasn't caused by a failing HD but simple file corruption.

 

Just so you know, you can also run a disk check using the Microsoft Recovery Console as described here