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XP PRO-SP3 Boot Nightmare.


Beave

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Oh kay-- here we go again, I have a (HP) Compaq 6710 with160gb HDD (Sata), Single Partition of 147gb, 8gb Ram, Intel Duo Core running (Or was running) XP-Pro sp3 (x86)  Now the HDD Bootsector and MBR is totally corrupted. It boots to the Bios then stops proclaiming the Boot Manager is missing. Well this in tiself should'nt be to hard right??! Wrong! I have a Dell with Windows 7 "64 BIT" as an aide for searching and downloading solutions for the XP. And after all the claims and fan-fare about how good someones burner is and how "EASY" it is to use their programs, files, and ingenious bull...t  ways to con you into some obscure download you don't want but accept anyways because you need some file or such and besides i have nothing better to do than spend a day or two in Control Panel\Add remove Programs Section when the crying is all over. I thought i found "THEE" solution. Now during all this i"ve dealt with the 64 to 32bit issue and vice-versa for sometime now needless to say. I only have managed to get this thing to boot to Command Prompt with a copies of Windows 7 64 bit BootMgr and an XP-Pro SP-2 64 bit. (No my XP is NOT a 64 bit OS) and if i let it go beyond the Command prompt option it goes to Blue screen on Win 7, and freezes with XP SP2. As stated earlier (LOL) i thought i had the answer to the major issues (Bootsect--MBR--Partitions) with WinSetupFromUSB which boasts it supports both 64 and 32. Now after playing with Komku and Imgburn and various .iso, Torrent, and .zip files WintoUSB sounded pretty good. UNTIL you want to copy the  7z files needed on a XP FAT formatted 4gb USB stick in the 64 bit Dell, copy those to the XP Command Prompt extract them there to get WinsetupfromUSB.exe file, reformat the drive etc, blah blah. Then to end all when i finally get a file snuck thru and ready to execute i get "The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present" on the XP side of things and when i select a 32 bit app to download on the Dell to the 32 bit USB stick i get something like "This is not the right format for your OS" I can usually work around this one but what i need i'm guessing is some script or the like to invoke the programs once i successfully get them to the XP. Right now all i can access right now is the command prompt and a very basic Notepad, all of which is running in "Safe-Mode", although i can invoke the CMD /a option and sometimes a "Run as Admin", but that just shoots the program to Notepad in Hexidecimal. As i see it i think i have to gain access the Partition and Bootsectors alignment files. Any and all input would most appreciated                     The Beave.

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Any and all input would most appreciated

Well, maybe you could start by exposing/describing the actual issue, along the lines of the Standard Litany:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/problem-report-standard-litany.html

 

As i see it i think i have to gain access the Partition and Bootsectors alignment files.

Or maybe you are risking to slip on a chocolate covered banana :ph34r::

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.html

Really :), I cannot make head or tail of your report :unsure:, you posted either vague or incorrect descriptions and it seems like you blindly threw at that computer everything (and the kitchen sink).

IF the "the HDD Bootsector and MBR is totally corrupted" it wouldn't show any message, and in the case of a missing file (or some other misconfiguration, no code known to man would print on screen a message "proclaiming the Boot Manager is missing", the common messages for a XP are in the bootsector (and if you see it it means that the bootsector is loaded, i.e. the MBR did load it successfully):

A disk read error occurredNTLDR is missingNTLDR is compressedPress Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

While a Vista/7/later OS would have these ones:

A disk read error occurredBOOTMGR is missingBOOTMGR is compressedPress Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Now, if you got the "BOOTMGR is missing" it means that *somehow* the bootsector for the active partition was replaced with one coming from Vista or later, thus invoking BOOTMGR instead of NTLDR.

 

This is normally easily fixable using bootsect.exe or a similar tool, but of course you need to be able to boot that PC to some form of "live OS" (from CD/DVD or from USB) or physically remove the hard disk and connect it to a working machine.

 

What is your situation, now? (i.e. what EXACTLY happens now when you attempt to boot the system)

What do you want to do (final GOAL, not what you think is the way to get to it)?

Like:

Do you want to reinstall the XP?

Do you want to troubleshoot the actual issue and attempt to repair the existing OS?

 

jaclaz

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