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Geek Culture / Can´t boot into Windows XP, need help reparing it

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Mr Z
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 08:34
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Hi all.

Suddenly my computer started to bluescreen on boot (after I installed Age of Empires 3 on it). Fact is I can´t even boot into safemode, even thought I don´t get a BSOD then... I just get a black screen for a while, and then the computer restarts.

I suspected it was the bootsector that was corrupt, so I tried to fix it from the XP recovery console, but it had no effect. I did not know how to use it, though, so I just ran a "fixboot" on it. It said that the boot sector was indeed corrupt, and that it had created a new one. However it did not work. Anyone has any idea of what may be wrong?

Take care,
Mr Z.

"Operator! Give me the number for 911!"
- Homer J. Simpson
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 12:11
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It wouldn't be the boot sector if it was a BSOD; the NT kernel is loaded several steps after and only it can display one. I'm guessing if a game did it, it installed some nasty copy protection which is messing with your machine.

Disconnect your CD/DVD drives and see what happens.

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Monk
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 13:06
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Check what you're booting from. Make sure you're booting from hardrive not CD/DVD drive or something like that.

Monk

I like work. It fascinates me. I sit and look at it for hours.
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Mr Z
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 13:48
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The loading screen for XP appear before the BSOD (that bar makes about one to four cycles before the BSOD appear), so I am sure I am booting from the HDD. Will check it out, though.

As for the copy protection, will look into it.

"Operator! Give me the number for 911!"
- Homer J. Simpson
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Van B
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 16:20
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You should go into recovery console, and look up commands like Fixmbr, Fixboot - they can repair your boot sector and get it working again. Load up the XP install CD and press R for recovery console when first prompted.

If you do need to reinstall but don't want to loose your files, I suggest buying a hard drive and installing on that, then have your old hard drive attached for storage. The files should be accessible even though the boot sector is borked up.

If you have 1 big hard drive, with no partitions, then you'll know why that was a bad idea by now. If you partition your HDD you can set a 40-60gb OS partition, and use the remainder for other partitions to hold your files - I would even suggest making a real small partition just for drivers and bios updates. Then if you need to reinstall it takes a fraction of the time.


Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 16:39
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You can install more than one copy of XP on a hard drive or you can delete the old Windows directory and install a new copy into it.

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Benjamin
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 16:44
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If all else fails I'd suggest you boot into Ubuntu using a LiveCD, back up all your stuff, and totally reinstall Windows.
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Mr Z
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 18:10 Edited at: 19th Aug 2009 18:12
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Quote: "You should go into recovery console, and look up commands like Fixmbr, Fixboot - they can repair your boot sector and get it working again. Load up the XP install CD and press R for recovery console when first prompted.

If you do need to reinstall but don't want to loose your files, I suggest buying a hard drive and installing on that, then have your old hard drive attached for storage. The files should be accessible even though the boot sector is borked up.

If you have 1 big hard drive, with no partitions, then you'll know why that was a bad idea by now. If you partition your HDD you can set a 40-60gb OS partition, and use the remainder for other partitions to hold your files - I would even suggest making a real small partition just for drivers and bios updates. Then if you need to reinstall it takes a fraction of the time."

Have already tried fixboot, it did not work. Can try fixmbr... anything else that recovery console can do to help?
Quote: "If all else fails I'd suggest you boot into Ubuntu using a LiveCD, back up all your stuff, and totally reinstall Windows."

Yeah, I know. Would still be frustrating.

Windows have never worked that well on it. Vista, cannot even play HL2 games for some reason. XP, some games just refuse to work and now this. Ubuntu, works better then any of the others, but there are no games for it. Yay.

"Operator! Give me the number for 911!"
- Homer J. Simpson
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 18:36
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Well, you could always struggle with Wine.

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Roxas
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Posted: 19th Aug 2009 19:02
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The struggling part really comes depending on games. If you play games that work poorly on Wine, you prob not gonna get them run good until new Wine release. If the game works great you may only need few DLL's or none and the game works great, average or even better.

You should install Windows again tho if you are dependent on games. If you want to try Linux+Wine then visit this link. and check what games work. I don't suggest getting Cedega as it "sucks" and costs. There is good easy front end solution for Wine tho, called PlayOnLinux. You may check it too.

Good luck tho.
(Btw check your bios boot order, if this is MBR issue, some bioses like to swap device boot order)

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Mr Z
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Posted: 21st Aug 2009 00:45 Edited at: 21st Aug 2009 00:47
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Ok, now the screen stopped working for some reason. It won´t come up anything. So now I can´t even try to fix this until I figured out the screen problem... It stopped working yesterday or maybe the day before that, started to work again, and now it refuses again.

EDIT:

And I would prefer not do use Wine. Even though I prefer Linux over Windows, I choose the platform for games that works best, and that is Windows. Maybe I can try it as a last resort... if I get the screen to work.

"Operator! Give me the number for 911!"
- Homer J. Simpson
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