Topic: XP Start up problem

[Johnrow]

 
Hi there I am new to this forum and am looking for help.
I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 which is running XP pro.
Yesterday, I was getting annoying flags relating to my F Secure anti virus automatic updates not being available-when I clicked the flag to clear it would reappear after about 10 secs and kept reappearing.
I decided to do a System Restore,rolling the date back 4days.
The PC rebooted and a page came up for me to select the operating system either XP Pro. or "Elvis the King"-no-this is not a wind up!! I selected XP Pro and a blue screen appeared with the XP logo but no user logon boxes.
If I go into Safe Mode all I get is a screen full of DOS addreses and after about 2mins. the blue screen with XP logo appears again. I have tried selecting "Use last known  good Boot up" option and I get the same blue page.

Can anyone out there help??
I am no PC guru so not too heavy with the technical jargon please.

[Clive]

Hi Johnrow and     Someone will be along to help you with your problem as soon as possible.

[Sandra]

Hi John,
This could be a hard one to sort out  

Do you have a full XP pro cd or is it just the Dell supplied restore one ?

I am not sure if the restore one will work for what I would try first.

Set the pc to boot from the CD as the first boot device in the bios, I assume you know how to do that, if not please ask.

Then have the XP cd in the drive and reboot the pc, press a key when it says boot from CD press any key to boot from CD and let it run through the first few bits until it gets to the installation options screen.

One option is to press R for the repair XP procedure.
Press R and then the Enter key.

After a short delay it will ask you which installation you wish to repair.
It should be 1 C:\windows the press the no 1 key and then Enter.
When you get the C:\windows line type FIXMBR and press Enter.
It will give you a warning, cant remember the exact wording now but just press the Y key and then the Enter one.
It will say that it has written a new MBR and go back to the C:\windows line.

Switch the pc off and then restart it and remove the cd and hopefully that will allow it to boot into windows.

You may have to set the boot sequence in the bios back to boot from Hard drive as the first device, depending on your type of bios.

If it boots into windows then see if you can update yor AV program and do a scan immediately.

Let us know if that works or not, or if you dont understand anything.

[Johnrow]

:?
Thanks for the prompt response.
Let me give you a bit more background-the laptop was bought from Dell about 2 yrs ago and had XP Home Edition loaded.Dell do not supply any recovery or operating system discs, they state that there is no need because "System Restore" will do the job. That's fine if you can log on-which I can't.
About 3months ago I had XP Pro loaded on to the PC and it was loaded on from a legitimate Corporate edition with multi licensing.I did not have any problems unitil this happened. I do not have the CD or a boot disc.
I have a HP desktop also and when I bought that I was requested to make a set of Recovery Discs, hovever Dell do not give this facility.
I would even strongly consider formatting the laptop and starting again if it would be easier but I can't access anything at the moment as the PC stands.
Your advice is much appreciated. I don't use forums very often but when I do I find they are full of really helpful people.

[Sandra]

Hi John,
I think its discgraceful that you dont get a full version of the OS when you buy a new pc  

There are various programs available that may help you without having the OS cd but it does make it harder.

Theres a bootable cd that you should be able to find if you google for it called Hirams Ultimate boot CD.

That will allow you to boot the pc and there are some diagnostic programs on it including an AV program.
Unfortunately unless you get a very recently updated one the virus definitions wil be a few months old and if its a new virus thats got into your system it may not be able to fix it.

Its worth a try though.

If you have the original serial number of the XP pro corporate edition that you installed you can probably get a copy downloaded off the net and activate it with that number.

[Simon]

Have you tried booting with the F-Secure CD, if you have one?

1.  Insert the F-Secure Internet Security installation CD in your computer.
2.  Reboot your computer.
3.  Press ENTER when the F-Secure splash screen appears on reboot. The scan starts.
4.  Note! The scan can take some time depending on your computer?s speed.
5.  When the scan is complete, you will see the scan report. Press ?CTRL + ALT + Delete? to exit the Boot screen. Your computer will restart.

http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/supportissue/fsis2006/virus_q08.shtml

[Johnrow]

Tried the F-secure disc-wouldn't boot. Tried a Hard Drive clean up disc, thought I could then reboot windows-DISASTER!!!. Now all I have are the following two messages on the boot up screen

No boot sector on internal hard drive

No bootable devices-strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility

Additionally the laptop will not operate on the battery, it's as if it doesn't exist, will only run off the mains adapter.
I think it's time to give up and leave it to an expert with the harware side of things.
Give me a large machine to strip down and repair anyday!!

Lucky I still have the reliable old Desktop.

[Simon]

This won't help, but just out of curiosity, what was the "Elvis the King" reference?  Is that something which appeared unintentionally on your part?

[Johnrow]

No-I don't have any idea where it came from. I have not carried out any web searches etc.-in fact I'm not really a fan of Elvis!!!

[Simon]

That's very strange!  I was looking on Google, and can't find any references to it as a virus.  

Anyway, it sounds like your boot sector has been damaged.  Have you tried booting with a floppy boot disc?  You can get one on http://www.bootdisk.com/ or follow Sandra's suggestion above, obviously using your desktop PC.  This is not from personal experience, but having done a bit of Googling, it seems if you can get to the command prompt with a floppy boot disc, you may be able to repair a damaged Boot Sector by typing FIXBOOT and press Enter.  This might just get you into Windows, and enable you to do a virus scan, but I'm not sure where you would go from there, without a Windows CD or recovery disc.

[Johnrow]

 Thanks Simon, the laptop does not have a floppy drive. I have a 1gb pen drive, can I create a boot disc on this and boot up via. the USB on the laptop. I know usually Windows is booted from a floppy or dedicated CD. I can get a USB floppy from Ebay cheap and quick enough-is that the right way to go.
Thanks Guys for all your help and advice-much appreciated
I would have been lost without the desktop and the net access!!!

[Simon]

It seems you can do, but it looks like it firstly depends if the BIOS on the laptop offers an option to boot from a USB device.  If so, then you might be able to use some of the info from the link below:-

http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php

[Sandra]

You can create a bootable CD if your bios doesnt support booting from a USB flash drive.

I think Boot disk,com gioves options for floppy or CD.

I am not sure what the difference is between FIXBOOT and FIXMBR as I have always used FIXMBR.

No bootable devices could mean a bios error as you should really get a message saying "No system disc, change disc and strike any key", or similar, if its not detecting a bootable prigram in your floppy, CD or hard drive  :?

[gmax]

i use "Hiren's BootCD 8.4" i found it very good for removing trojans and viruses, that other antivirus programs cant remove, there's some good programs for troubleshooting pc problems.



Hiren's BootCD 8.4
All in one Dos Bootable CD which has all these utilities

Partition Tools
Partition Magic Pro 8.05
Best software to partition hard drive

Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0.554
Popular disk management functions in a single suite

Paragon Partition Manager 7.0.1274
Universal tool for partitions

Partition Commander 9.01
The safe way to partition your hard drive,with undo feature

Ranish Partition Manager 2.44
a boot manager and hard disk partitioner.

The Partition Resizer v1.3.4
move and resize your partitions in one step and more.

Smart Fdisk 2.05
a simple harddisk partition manager

SPecial Fdisk 2000
SPFDISK a partition tool.

eXtended Fdisk 0.9.3
XFDISK allows easy partition creation and edition

GDisk 1.1.1
Complete replacement for the DOS FDISK utility and more.

Disk Clone Tools
ImageCenter 5.6 (Drive Image 2002)
Best software to clone hard drive

Norton Ghost 8.3
Similar to Drive Image (with usb/scsi support)

Acronis True Image 8.1.945
Create an exact disk image for complete system backup and disk cloning.

Partition Saving 3.20
A tool to backup/restore partitions. (SavePart.exe)

COPYR.DMA Build013
A Tool for making copies of hard disks with bad sectors

Antivirus Tools
F-Prot Antivirus 3.16f (0408)
Very good virus scanner (with ntfs support and easy to use menu)

McAfee Antivirus 4.40 (0408)
a virus scanner (with ntfs support and easy to use menu)
******************************
WITH SEPT 13, 2006 DEFINITIONS - thanks to sumstew4u@yahoo.com
******************************

Recovery Tools
Active Partition Recovery 3.0
To Recover a Deleted partition.

Active Uneraser 3.0
To recover deleted files and folders on FAT and NTFS systems.

Ontrack Easy Recovery Pro 6.10
To Recover data that has been deleted/virus attack

Winternals Disk Commander 1.1
more than just a standard deleted-file recovery utility

TestDisk 6.5b
Tool to check and undelete partition.

Lost & Found 1.06
a good old data recovery software.

DiyDataRecovery Diskpatch 2.1.100
An excellent data recovery software.

Prosoft Media Tools 5.0 v1.1.2.64
Another excellent data recovery software with many other options.

PhotoRec 6.5b
File and pictures recovery Tool.

Testing Tools
System Speed Test 4.78
it tests CPU, harddrive, ect.

PC-Check 6.0
Easy to use hardware tests

Ontrack Data Advisor 5.0
Powerful diagnostic tool for assessing the condition of your computer

The Troubleshooter 7.02
all kind of hardware testing tool

PC Doctor 3.0
a benchmarking and information tool

Test Cpu/Video/Disk 5.6
a tool to test cpu, video, and disk

Test Hard Disk Drive 1.0
a tool to test Hard Disk Drive

RAM (Memory) Testing Tools
DocMemory 2.2b
RAM Test utility

GoldMemory 5.07
RAM Test utility

Memtest86+ 1.65
PC Memory Test

Hard Disk Tools
Hard Disk Diagnostic Utilities
Seagate Seatools Desktop Edition 3.02
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools
Western Digital Diagnostics (DLGDIAG) 5.04f
Maxtor PowerMax 4.23
Maxtor amset utility 4.0
Maxtor(or any Hdd) Low Level Formatter 1.1
Fujitsu HDD Diagnostic Tool 6.61
Fujitsu IDE Low Level Format 1.0
Samsung HDD Utility(HUTIL) 2.02
Samsung Disk Diagnose (SHDIAG) 1.28
IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test 4.08
IBM/Hitachi Feature Tool 2.01
Gateway GwScan 3.15
ExcelStor's ESTest 3.80
MHDD 4.6
WDClear 1.30

HDD Regenerator 1.51
to recover a bad hard drive

Ontrack Disk Manager 9.57
Disk Test/Format/Maintenance tool.

Norton Disk Doctor 2002
a tool to repair a damaged disk, or to diagnose your hard drive.

Norton Disk Editor 2002
a powerful disk editing, manual data recovery tool.

Active Kill Disk 1.1
Securely overwrites and destroys all data on physical drive.

HDAT2 4.5
main function is testing and repair (regenerates) bad sectors for detected devices

SmartUDM 2.00
Hard Disk Drive S.M.A.R.T. Viewer.

Victoria 3.33
a freeware program for low-level HDD diagnostics

System Information Tools
Aida16 2.14
a system information tool, extracts details of all components of the PC

PCI and AGP info Tool
The PCI System information & Exploration tool.

System Analyser version 5.3n
View extensive information about your hardware

Navratil Software System Information 0.59.9
High-end professional system information tool

Astra 5.21
Advanced System info Tool and Reporting Assistant

HwInfo 5.0.3
a powerful system information utility

PC-Config 9.33 (0408)
Complete hardware detection of your computer

SysChk 2.46
Find out exactly what is under the hood of your PC

CPU Identification utility v1.12
Detailed information on CPU (CHKCPU.EXE)

CTIA CPU Information
another CPU information tool

MBR (Master Boot Record) Tools
MBRWork 1.07b
a utility to perform some common and uncommon MBR functions

MBR Tool 2.2.100
backup, verify, restore, edit, refresh, remove, display, re-write...

DiskMan4
all in one tool for cmos, bios, bootrecord and more

BootFix Utility
Run this utility if you get 'Invalid system disk'

MBR SAVE / RESTORE 2.1
BootSave and BootRest tools to save / restore MBR

Boot Partition 2.60
add Partition in the Windows NT/2000/XP Multi-boot loader

Partition Table Doctor 3.0
a tool to repair/modify mbr, bootsector, partition table

Smart Boot Manager 3.7.1
a multi boot manager

Bootmagic 8.0
This tool is for multi boot operating systems

BIOS / CMOS Tools
CMOS 0.93
CMOS Save / Restore Tool

BIOS Cracker 4.8
BIOS password remover (cmospwd)

BIOS Cracker 1.4
BIOS password remover (cmospwc)

BIOS Utility 1.35.0
BIOS Informations, password, beep codes and more.

!BIOS 3.20
a powerfull utility for bios and cmos

DISKMAN4
a powerful all in one utility

UniFlash 1.40
bios flash utility

Kill CMOS
a tiny utility to wipe cmos

MultiMedia Tools
Picture Viewer 1.94
Picture viewer for dos, supports more then 40 filetypes.

QuickView Pro 2.57
movie viewer for dos, supports many format including divx.

MpxPlay 1.54
a small Music Player for dos

Password Tools
Active Password Changer 3.0
To Reset User Password on windows NT/2000/XP/2003 (FAT/NTFS)

Offline NT/2K/XP Password Changer
utility to reset windows nt/2000/xp administrator/user password.

NTPWD
utility to reset windows nt/2000/xp administrator/user password.

Registry Viewer 4.2
Registry Viewer/Editor for Win9x/Me/NT/2K/XP

ATAPWD 1.2
Hard Disk Password Utility

NTFS (FileSystems) Tools
NTFS Dos Pro 5.0
To access ntfs partitions from Dos

NTFS 4 Dos 1.4
To access ntfs partitions from Dos

Paragon Mount Everything 3.0
To access NTFS, Ext2FS, Ext3FS partitions from dos

NTFS Dos 3.02
To access ntfs partitions from Dos

EditBINI 1.01
to Edit boot.ini on NTFS Partition

Dos File Managers
Volkov Commander 4.99
Dos File Manager with LongFileName/ntfs support
(Similar to Norton Commander)

Dos Command Center 5.1
Classic dos-based file manager.

File Wizard 1.35
a file manager - colored files, drag and drop copy, move, delete etc.

File Maven 3.5
an advanced Dos file manager with high speed PC-to-PC file
transfers via serial or parallel cable

FastLynx 2.0
Dos file manager with Pc to Pc file transfer capability

LapLink 5.0
the smart way to transfer files and directories between PCs.

Dos Navigator 5.9.0
Dos File Manager, Norton Commander clone but has much more features.

Mini Windows 98
Can run from Ram Drive, with ntfs support,
Added 7-Zip which supports .7z .zip .cab .rar .arj .gzip,
.bzip2 .z .tar .cpio .rpm and .deb
Disk Defragmenter, Notepad / RichText Editor,
Image Viewer, .avi .mpg .divx .xvid Movie Player, etc...

Other Tools
Ghost Walker 2003.793
utility that changes the security ID (SID) for Windows NT, 2000 and XP

DosCDroast beta 2
Dos CD Burning Tools

Universal TCP/IP Network 5.7
MSDOS Network Client to connect via TCP/IP to a Microsoft based
network. The network can either be a peer-to-peer or a server based
network, it contains 85 different network card drivers

Dos Tools
USB CD-Rom Driver 1
Standard usb_cd.sys driver for cd drive

Universal USB Driver 2
Panasonic v2.20 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage

SCSI Support
SCSI Drivers for Dos

Interlnk support at COM1
To access another computer from COM port

Interlnk support at LPT1
To access another computer from LPT port

and too many great dos tools
very good collection of dos utilities
extract.exe   pkzip.exe   pkunzip.exe   unrar.exe   rar.exe
ace.exe   lha.exe   gzip.exe   uharcd.exe   mouse.com
attrib.com   deltree.exe   xcopy.exe   diskcopy.com   imgExtrc.exe
undelete.com   edit.com   fdisk.exe   fdisk2.exe   fdisk3.exe
lf.exe   delpart.exe   wipe.com   zap.com   format.com
move.exe   more.com   find.exe   hex.exe   debug.exe
split.exe   mem.exe   mi.com   sys.com   smartdrv.exe
xmsdsk.exe   killer.exe   share.exe   scandisk.exe   scanreg.exe
guest.exe   doskey.exe   duse.exe   biosdtct.exe   setver.exe
intersvr.exe   interlnk.exe   loadlin.exe   lfndos.exe   doslfn.com

Windows Tools
SpaceMonger 1.4
keeping track of the free space on your computer

Drive Temperature 1.0
Hard Disk Drive temperature meter

Disk Speed1.0
Hard Disk Drive Speed Testing Tool

MemTest 1.0
a Memory Testing Tool

PageDfrg 2.32
System file Defragmenter For NT/2k/XP

WhitSoft File Splitter 4.5a
a Small File Split-Join Tool

Ghost Image Explorer 8.3
to add/remove/extract files from Ghost image file

DriveImage Explorer 5.0
to add/remove/extract files from Drive image file

Drive SnapShot 1.37
creates an exact Disk Image of your system into a file while windows is running.

Active Undelete 5.1.010
a tool to recover deleted files

Restoration 2.5.14
a tool to recover deleted files

GetDataBack for FAT 1.01
Data recovery software for FAT file systems

GetDataBack for NTFS 1.03
Data recovery software for NTFS file systems

Startup Control Panel 2.8
a tool to edit startup programs

Startup Monitor 1.02
it notifies you when any program registers itself to run at system startup

IB Process Manager 1.02
a little process manager for 9x/2k, shows dll info etc.

Pocket KillBox 2.0
can be used to get rid of files that stubbornly refuse to allow you to delete them

HijackThis 1.99
a general homepage hijackers detector and remover and more

RootkitRevealer 1.7
Rootkit Revealer is an advanced patent-pending root kit detection utility.

Silent Runners Revision 47
A free script that helps detect spyware, malware and adware in the startup process

CurrPort 1.07
displays the list of all currently opened TCP and UDP ports on your computer

Unknown Devices 1.2
helps you find what those unknown devices in Device Manager really are

PCI 32 Sniffer 1.1 (0408)
device information tool (similar to unknown devices)

NewSID 4.10
utility that changes the security ID (SID) for Windows NT, 2000 and XP

Double Driver 1.0
Driver Backup and Restore tool

CPU-Z 1.36
It gathers information on some of the main devices of your system

CWShredder 2.19
Popular CoolWebSearch Trojan Remover tool

Winsock 2 Fix for 9x
to fix corrupted Winsock2 information by poorly written Internet programs

XP TCP/IP Repair 1.0
Repair your Windows XP Winsock and TCP/IP registry errors

CCleaner 1.32.345
Crap Cleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool

EzPcFix 1.0.0.16
Helpful tool when trying to remove viruses, spyware, and malware

Content Advisor Password Remover 1.0
It Removes Content Advisor Password from Internet Explorer

Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4 (0408)
Application to scan for spyware, adware, hijackers and other malicious software.

SpywareBlaster 3.5.1 (0408)
Prevent the installation of spyware and other potentially unwanted software.

Ad-Aware SE Personal 1.06 (0408)
find and remove spyware, adware, dialers etc. (a must have tool)

[Simon]

That look excellent, gmax.    It seems the latest version is 8.5, but is it me?  How do you actually download the CD?  :?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/hiren.thanki/bootcd.html