Hp & Xp

[Farabomb]

I have a problem that was dropped in my lap. A guy at work gave me a HP pavilion 7915 cele system. he's been having problems for a while. Yesterday he comes up to me to pick my brain. Seems he installed a burner a while ago thus negating the HP warranty and there was a 30 day staples one. Now he has a dead BSODing box and no help. Now I have it and I can't get even close to working. I get a unmountable boot volume bsod. In safemode, normal, and LKGC. The burner worked fine and it went tits up while he was using it. I'm thinking virous but that might be just player0 scaring me.;) I've only spent 5 min on it so I'm just throwing this out there so I might have something better than "you're F' ed" when he calls me tommrow. It's running winXPhome and seems to have everything on board.

Anyone's thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

[lechumbl]

Hi Fara,

Could be a boot virus, but I doubt it.

Start from ground zero.
Pull everything out of the box and start over.
Put in vid card, connect H/D only and boot up. Does it boot without any other cards on it?
Yes: Then put in the next card, etc, until it stops working, then you know who the culpert is,
No: Then you know that the BIOS is toasted. So reflash the BIOS.

Give that a try and we will go from there.

Take care......

[Farabomb]

I want to try to save his data if I can but I do have the OK to reinstall. Everything's on-board execpt the modem so I'm going to take everything out and do as you say. I'm going to try to install an OS on one of my extra drives, boot with that and see if I can recover his data and start from scratch.

From talking to him it seems that it really didn't work right from the begining so it might be something else. He wants me to put some more memory in so he's getting a 256 stick out of my server. It has 128 in it now and it should work but that's the minimum for XP so that might be what's making it run so slow. He says it's slow I can't get much past POST before it quits. This gives me something to do this weekend.

[Player0]

I dont think it sounds like a hardware issue. I think its just a botched driver. Could be a number of things really. Without being there at the machine, I couldnt help ya much.

I would boot from the XP Home CD and go in to repair console and see if you cant see the problem from there. If the repair options dont work, reinstall XP over the current version. Should reset any minor boot problems without loosing him any data.

[Farabomb]

This is where I have a problem. I only have XP pro and when I tried to reinstall it wants to reformat. It also has 2 partitions. Something called eisa utitlites and what seems to be the OS partition.

I really don't know too much about repair console but I'll read my XP book at work and see what I can find out. If I can't repair this I'm going to wipe it and start clean. I think it might be fat32 so I might be able to get into it from dos but it's been so long I forgot how to log on to a network from dos. I'd like to offload his files onto one of my drives but........ thinking. would it be possible to use copy/xcopy or maybe ghost (I have MUCH trouble with ghost) to copy his drive onto one of my spares, reinstall on his then bring his files back in?

I want to save his stuff but I'm getting pissed. He'd like it back on mon. so I have wll weekend to do it but I also have to work on the car among other things. Damn computers.

[lechumbl]

Hi Fara,

If you make a ghost image of the files, then reinstall OS, and reimage the files, you will be right back where you were. Ghost makes an exact image of OS and files. It will wipe away all that you did and replace it with what you had. One of the advantages of ghost is that is what it is supposed to do.

You don't need to use the consol function to repair.

Boot from a floppy and get to the a:\ prompt.
Make sure that you say that you want CD drivers loaded.
Go to the CD drive that has the WinXP Os in it. Change the directory to the I386 directory. Then type "Winnt", without the brackets. This will let you install from dos. When you get to the selection part of the install, say repair, and do not choose consol method.

This will OVERWRITE the corrupt files, but not change any of his settings and preferences. This will also not change any of the non corrupt files.

Let us know how it goes.........

[Farabomb]

Good, I can't ever get ghost to work right. Installing from DOS used to be my method of choice. I can boot with the CD and get to the choices install, repair, and quit. After that I have 3 different partitions. I assume that the larger partiton is the OS one. I've reinstalled XP on my box to fix problems (or make them worse) so I think I know that you're talking about. I just have'nt seen what I'm used to seeing. But I really didn't get into it too much. Hockey every night is taking a lot out of me so by the time I gat home I want to die. Not beat my head on this box. I'm going to dive in tommrow and get something done if I don't do it tonight.

I just have to rember to make a 98 startup disk before I go home from work. I can never find one when I need one. Mainly because none of my working boxes have floppy drives insatlled.

Also I have only XPpro and not XPhome that he has installed. Could that cause a problem?

[Farabomb]

It only gives me the option of recovery console. It won't let me reinstall.

[Farabomb]

It is done. Clean install of XP and he's happy with a working computer. I wish I knew what went wrong but at least it's working again.

[lechumbl]

Hi Fara,

Word of advice for him....BACKUP!!!!!!!!!!

Take care..........

[speculative]

Originally posted by lechumbl
Hi Fara,

Word of advice for him....BACKUP!!!!!!!!!!

Take care..........

:cool: You should be the Norton Ghost product spokesman Lee. :D

-speculative

[NorthernYankee]

I actually prefer DriveImage2002 I could never get ghost to work the way I wanted but DI2002 does exactly what I want

--NY

[lechumbl]

Hi Spec,

Whether it is Norton Ghost, or PQDI, or WinXP's own onboard backup. without it, you are screwed.

I cannot be strong enough in my telling all to backup.

I have seen time after time people get burned because of no backup.

It is so simple and non time consuming, there is no reason not to do it.

Besides, the first time you need it and don't have it, is when you see I was not preaching for nothing.

Take care.......

[speculative]

Originally posted by NorthernYankee
I actually prefer DriveImage2002 I could never get ghost to work the way I wanted but DI2002 does exactly what I want

--NY

Totally agree Lee! Although I currently don't use Ghost, etc., I currently backup the files I need manually onto CDR's because I'm from the school of thought that an OS re-install now and then does a HD good. ;) But, WinXP has been very good to me so far. I have used the system restore feature and it's very handy.

Hmm... so PowerQuest makes Drive Image? I use Partition Magic and like it; perhaps I'll have to give DI a try sometime.

-spec