XP Repair facility and recovery

[Carolina1]

The computer would not boot my XP drive (only one) this morning. No known changes were made prior to shut down.

I could access the drive through live Linux disks and Free-Dos, so the drive seems okay.

I finally ran the repair facility and used chkdsk to verify the drive was again okay. I then went to the install function and selected repair instead of a full reinstall. The machine has restarted with XP. I verified the properties and the bios setup to make certain that everything was normal.

Present problem - Outlook can't open the default email folders. I can't get into www.microsoft.com (using IE6.0)or use the update manager with the message "The requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context". I'm using Firefox at this time to get onto the MS site. All the restore files were deleted during the repair, so I'll not even waste my time using that option in the future. I also ran a virus scan (auto-updated yesterday) and found no issues. This is an upgrade from 98 ( 3months ago) with all the online updates using update manager, with the exception of IE7 because of all the negative press it recieved.

1G of Ram & 1.3 AMD and plenty of hard drive space. I use my computer for work and not play, so there is no junk software on my system.

3 Questions

1) Is there any way at this point to avoid a full re-installation of XP and all my other software? I already lost a work day going through the first round.

2) Is there any common explanation for this sudden boot issue, even when the disk is clean by even MS analysis?

3) Is there a true full backup program for XP, that will not require re-installation of XP first to re-access the program.

Thanks in advance,

[trickytwista]

hi there...out of curiosity what antivirus you using and have checked for spyware crap too? and most of all i do not recommend upgrading from win 98 or any other OS as xp runs best from a fresh clean install and not from an upgrade.. could also be that your MBR is corrupted...cheers

Edited April 4, 2007 by trickytwista

[Carolina1]

Avast for anti-virus and I did run a spyware check as well. I ran a complete scan when I finally did get it to boot and it came up clean except for a few files that it could not scan, but I knew what they were. I also turned off my firewall and used turned on the Windows firewall as soon as I received the message the first time.

[Andromeda43]

Carolina,

I'll take just one question that you asked and try to answer that. OK?

There are two very easy ways to get over, past, through or under problems with Winders XP.

I upgraded from 98/SE to XP-Pro with an Upgrade CD years ago and had no problem with the upgrade.

I keep a VERY clean PC and XP always ran good. So how you got there (to XP) is not the problem.

First, in XP you have a quickie backup system called, "System Restore" where XP makes periodic restore points, or copies of your registry, that can be restored if something goes haywire, but the PC still boots up OK.

You can manually make restore points yourself or just run a little script in your Startup folder to make a new restore point every time you reboot your PC. (that's what I do)

Then there are several very good programs that will back up your entire C: drive to a compressed Image File which you can store on a second hard drive, DVD, etc.

For that purpose, I use Ghost 2003. I got it for free on a Drivers Disk that came with a new mobo I bought years ago.

I've been using it several times a week ever since.

I'm not going to go into a tutorial on Ghost here, but suffice it to say that if you have a recent Ghost Image stored somewhere safe, you never have to worry about loosing your stuff due to a HD crash, fire, theft, etc.

At least once a week, I make a ghost image to a DVD and store it in a fireproof vault several miles away.

Have you even tried to use the System Restore feature? It's already on your PC.

Luck!

Andromeda43

[Carolina1]

Answer to: Andromeda43

No, I could not try the system restore. I stated in the original message that the repair facility obviously deleted all my restore points. The only restore point that could be found was the one made at installation (after the repair), which of coarse was exactly what I was using and isn't any good when XP won't even boot. I hadn't expected this delete to happen since it never did under the 98/95 system backup utility.

So, I had not looked at an external utility, but I obviously will take a look at one now. It's not a total loss because I frequently back up my data to external drives and the data wasn't lost anyway. It's just wasted time and with no explanation, I can only expect it to repeat.