XP won't boot

Hi,

Compaq Presario XP (SP1) machine was working fine until 2 nights ago when it wouldn't boot. The message was "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully". It would not boot up in any mode (Safe or Last Good Config., etc.). She then tried <F10> (System Recovery) when trying to boot and things got worse - it failed to find a bunch of "oem..." files in windows\system32 and with no way to Cancel, she powered it down. Now when powered up, the message "NTLDR is missing" appears. It also seems that she doesn't have (or cannot find) the XP CD or a recovery disk.

What do you suggest?

 

wow, nobody responded; that's amazing. Anyway, I have replaced the hard drive, gotten recovery Cds from Compaq, and and now working with the drive. I guess the question I should ask is whether the drive with the bad sector can be reused/salvaged by somehow getting the system to ignore the bad area, or whether once you get one bad, others follow? Anybody?

 

u can prob save the drive if u needed too. once you load your os onto the new drive install the other drive as a slave and pull the files from it. Also run chkdsk it is a very good utility for fixing drives

 

Thanks, I will try that. I already spent $90 to have files pulled off old drive to a CD, but when I tried to view the docs on "new" pc they are unreadable, and jpegs don't display. Have to find out why this is so. Will call repair/service place and find out details. Sigh.

 

as long as it wasnt a data recovery you would have issues. most companies do not gaurantee anything on the files recovered to work. they dont even garentee to find anything.

 

as long as it wasnt a data recovery you wont have issues. most companies do not gaurantee anything with the files recovered to work. they dont even garentee to find anything.

 

NTLDR missing is not that hard to recover from. There have been a few threads in this very forum discussing that exact problem.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showpost.php?p=703492&postcount=3

 

should of done it yourself with knopix
http://knoppix.org/
can be used as o/s or recovery or testing hardware..