I’m running xp pro. I ran into problems with a scanning program so I uninstalled sp2 and I was deleting the other xp hotfixes, believing that this was the source of the problem with the program that had suddenly begun to crash.
I tried repair from the recovery console but the display adapter was not installed the first time I tried the recovery console, so I tried it again and the display adapter driver still did not install. I thought that if I disabled the default display driver, that xp would locate the correct the driver that I had tried to manually install (but, for some reason, xp would not install). Then the screen went blank when I tried to get into windows on restart. So, I tried safe mode, same thing.
When I tried to repair from the recovery console a third time, the install hangs. I finally took out the disk and restarted. Now it hangs at “setup is being restarted”.
At recovery console, I copied (MyCD drive):\i386\ntldr C:\” and “(MyCD drive):\i386\ntdetect.com C:\”. Then I typed “attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini“ and “BootCfg /Rebuild” but, for some reason, I get the message that the first command is not correct. Thus, the second load is listed for loading and when I select it on startup, I get the same “setup is being restarted” and it hangs.
The OS is still on the hd, it hasn’t been wiped out. I can see its correct size on the hd. How do I access it? Have I made a mistake in my attempts to create a boot to it?
If I cannot access the OS, what would be a strategy for getting some of the data files off of it? In the past, using dual boot (98se and xp pro) and Partition Magic, with 2 hds, I was able to deselect an OS as primary and, using the other OS on the other hd, I could recover the data from the other hd that way. I do have a clone of the current hd on another hd, but I need to get at the data that was left on the current, crashed hd. Is there a way that I could hook up BOTH hds simultaneously and, somehow, deselect the current crashed hd as the primary so that I could get my data off of it using the clone as primary?
Thank you.