BleepingComputer.com: win xp pro boot issues

hey everyone, how's it going?

i ran into some trouble last night. my laptop decided not to boot and gave me the blinking underscore in the top left corner. i was at first worried about overheating so i gave it an hour and switched out the harddrives to one of my older ones and it booted fine, so the computer def works.

so i switched back to the problem hd (160 gig western digital scorpio) and booted from the cd-rom into the recovery console and went through these steps:

1) changed attributes for boot.ini
2) deleted boot.ini
3) bootcfg /rebuild
4) chkdsk /r (said /f is not a valid parameter, i was under the impression that /r implies /f...)
5) fixboot

everything went fine, /fastdetect load option, chkdsk found some errors but they were recoverable and fixed (i hope? no /f parameter :[). one other nagging thing, i hit enter too fast and didn't get to put anything under the "load identifier prompt", i don't know if that would mess it up but i am going to do it all over again and make sure i put something in that field...

anyway, i'm going to assume the empty load identifier field doesn't matter...do i need to next use the FIXMBR command? i'm not too familiar with the recovery console because i take great care of my computers and have never really had an issue like this before, so i feel it is prudent to get some advice on how to use FIXMBR. also, could the hd be toast? i figure if the drive is toast none of the above would work.

inspiron 8600
1.5 ghz
win xp pro sp3
1 gig RAM

The fixmbr command is the standard cure for the blinking cursor, black screen. Has nothing to do with the boot.ini file.

Black Screen (fixmbr) - http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;314503

How to rebuild the Windows boot.ini Using Bootcfg - http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000648.htm

How to use CHKDSK in the XP Recovery Console - http://pirules3.14.googlepages.com/recovery_console_chkdsk

Louis

so i can just use FIXMBR? i get a warning that the computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record and that i may damage the partition tables if i countinue...advice?

Continue, that's a standard warning that I see every time I have used the fixmbr command.

Louis

update: so FIXMBR didn't work, i still get the blinking underscore after POST when trying to boot. could the first few sectors of the hd be bad? chkdsk comes back with no errors.

would a repair install do anything?

There is no magic answer.

The hard drive may be malfunctioning...the file system could be damaged...XP could be damaged...etc.

Trying a repair install with the correct CD cannot hurt anything, it remains to be seen if it helps.

Louis

alright, more advice needed...i am using an OEM XP pro full sp1 disk. the repair option will work using this disk even tho my current version of windows is sp3?

This post has been edited by fatcat776655: 02 March 2010 - 05:32 PM

No.

Well...sort of...you would (probably) wind up with a probable overwrite of your current system, with the possibility that the result will not function properly.

I forced one once, just to see what would happen...it wasn't pretty and I just did a clean install of XP.

Read How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install (Stevens) - http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm.

Louis