Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands

[brokencrow]

Found this scrounging around the net last night. Looks mighty useful.

"Allow me to build tension by prefacing the end-all/be-all solution with my background: Having worked for the now-incorporated Geek Squad branch of Best Buy Corporation for the better part of eight months, I have seen dozens upon dozens of systems come through our department with any one of these errors, brought in by customers who are afraid they did something, have a virus, or are in jeopardy of losing their data. Prior to my discovery of an invaluable sequence of commands, our standard procedure was to hook the afflicted drive to an external enclosure, back up a customer’s data and then restore the PC with the customer’s restore discs or an identical copy of Windows with the customer’s OEM license key. If the customer wasn’t keen on the applicable charges for the data backup, we informed them of the potential risks for a Windows repair installation (Let’s face it, they don’t always work right), had them sign a waiver, and we did our best.

Neither of these procedures are cheap in the realm of commercial PC repair, nor do they inspire a tremendous level of confidence in the technician or the hopeful client.

In an effort to expedite our repair time and retain the sanity of myself and other technicians, I received permission to undertake a case study on a variety of PCs currently in service that exhibited any of the aforementioned symptoms, and I took it upon myself to find a better solution. After crawling through the MSKB, Experts Exchange, MSDN and sundry websites all extolling the virtues of a solution to these problems, I only found one that worked, and it has been reliably serving me for the better part of two weeks on seventeen PCs to date."

http://www.short-media.com/printcontent.php?print=r&id=313

Not quite the Holy Grail, but close. :)

[curioustwo]

Thankx - I'll try it - My 7 year old got BSOD a few days after a memory upgrade (after which things were fine for days).
CDROM comes on line, but the keyboard, mouse and monitor do not attach. Something early in the boot. No fair - boot dragons are not supposed to surface while you are on a different machine battling an elusive driver compatability issue on a Chinese usb camera that has engaged too many cooks in the developer soup in a short time. The company's herky jerky development history told in nauseating detail in inf files. Thanks again,

Mark L.

[mirado.kelly]

Excelent resource, I too discovered this site a while back and have even wrote them down on paper, I prob wont remember them untill I have to use them, its been a while since ive had to fix a xp boot failure, but armed with these commands I will be ready.

Thankx - I'll try it - My 7 year old got BSOD a few days after a memory upgrade (after which things were fine for days).

Have you considered a memory tester, it is posible the memory is bad. There is a free memory tester http://www.memtest86.com/ you might find usefull.

[nihil]

Mirado old chap,

curioustwo says his CD ROM starts but his mouse, keyboard and monitor "do not attach".............by that I assume he means load? So how can he hope to run Memtest86:confused:

His best bet is to remove the memory upgrade and see if the machine still works in its former state. ;)

If it does then it certainly is not a Windows issue.

[morganlefay]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to brokencrow again.

MLF

[JPnyc]

That's a safeguard to prevent people abusing the rep system.

[morganlefay]

Yep...I know that.

I was just letting Broken Crow know I would have given him greenies if I could ;)

because the post and link was informative.


MLF

[JPnyc]

Well I agree so I did it for ya.

[metguru]

That's a safeguard to prevent people abusing the rep system.
Oh really?
:rolleyes:


Anyway,lol, brokencrow, very nice post. I have come along this problem before, and have gone through the long route, but not anymore ;) I'll have to try this next time I come across it.

[JPnyc]

Ooooooo, wait'll you have a question bout the software!! :p

[Moira]

I've bookmarked that excellent guide. I must admit to being a bit unsure of how to use the Recovery Console, likewise the Windows Support Tools, though I have them installed.

I haven't experimented with giving people "greenies" but I will start with brokencrow :)

Silly question, is this related to those green squares underneath an avatar? I assumed they were in direct proportion to number of posts.

[cgkanchi]

Yeah, it is related to the green dots under an avatar. The more "reputation points" (they used to be called antipoints) you have, the more dots. If you have negative "reputation points", the dots are red...

Cheers,
cgkanchi

[Moira]

*looks at dots*

No red ones anyway :) Why are some of them bright green, ie the ones I don't have?

Incidentally I just gave you some reputation (better than calling it antipoints!). Your responses are quick and I find you very helpful. It seems like I can add to my own reputation?

[cgkanchi]

The bright green ones are worth twice (or is that 10 times?, more anyway) as much as the dark green ones. Also, if you go over "x" points into the red, it used to be that you got autobanned. Great for getting rid of trolls, etc. I don't know if this is still the case after the upgrade, but I think it is... Also, you can't add to your own reputation, the system won't allow you to. It also won't allow you to assign reps repeatedly to a single person (or a small group of people) without assigning some reps to someone else. This is obviously to prevent abuse by the small group of people that actually think it makes them "1337" to have a lot of green dots.
It is always nice to see the comments accompanying reps, but I tend to use them more as an indication of what the community likes and doesn't like than as an actual "reputation" or "trust" system...
Cheers,
cgkanchi

[not_it]

check this (http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm)out. boot disk that does a lot of the same repairs

[The Old Man]

Found this scrounging around the net last night. Looks mighty useful....
http://www.short-media.com/printcontent.php?print=r&id=313

Not quite the Holy Grail, but close. :)

Just Close? Nearly indistinguishable. Thanks, a great post.

[Raion]

I had this link in my favorites pending printing ever since this thread was for posted. I just recently read it completely and I have a question about one of the load options. I tend to help a lot of people with their computers, and say I encounter this error, how will I be able to establish if they have a CPU with Intel's XD or AMD's NX buffer overflow protection? My CPU definitely doesn't have this so I wouldn't know how to check..my guess is the BIOS? Asking them would be out of the question since I'm usually dealing with people who don't know what the CPU is in the first place.

[Cider]

I only saw this post now: Read the whole article. Very informative, definately going into my bookmarks. Actually going to print it out and file it incase my Pc bombs out.

Thank you for this post.