XP Recovery 32/64 bit ?

ah hah!, so I take it crossloop is a remote program like logmein.com pcanywhere etc. Ok im down with that. I got an off the subject question about the boot.ini file. I understand the order of how its called up, MBR--> NTLDR ----> Boot.ini
NTLDR -----> Ntdetect.com

but when it comes to doing a bootcfg command to repair the boot.ini what exactly does it do. Does it reorder it according to the last system registry save point? Does it reorganize it according to a generic boot.ini that comes with windows? Im confused in that area.

My hardware professeur should of taught sleeping101 he would of been great. Wasnt impressed with his class at all. Spent way too long making aboot disk and not going into the troubleshooting aspect of things. The (Cause/Reaction) stuff.
 
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bootcfg is like Vista's bcdedit. Its a command line for configuring boot.ini, with several different things it can do like adding/removing entries, rebuilding a boot.ini, etc. Use bootcfg /? for usage information, though when I was talking about boot.ini I meant you going in after installing recovery console in notepad and changing the timeout value, though if you're more comfortable with the gui you can go into msconfig -> boot tab and make the necessary changes there.
 
xterra said:
Addendum:

whoa, yeah I've seen something very similar to that, except its hardware specific, license key has to be your own. DAM U MICROSOFT !!
Click to expand...

Yeah...after looking over the article, it is a bit disappointing in the fact that it indeed sounds like it is hardware specific. :frowning: Not to mention the fact that there is a lot of steps that need to be taken just to create a simple Recovery Console CD.

I did however find this site that talks about this program that this guy "Dean Adams" created, that can supposedly create a CD that you can run the Recovery Console from, but I don't know how trustworthy it is, and the link posted there to the program unfortunately is a direct link, so it is impossible to actually check it out first before downloading it.

But, anyhow, here it is, in case you want to use it anyway:
Recovery console CD update

Addendum:

Found something where you can check the authenticity of that program at:
Recovery Console - Boot Land

From what it sounds like, the batch file is ok...though, whether it works or not, is another story of course.
 
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I'll try it out and let ya know if it even boots up. I have three Windows XP partitions, this should be fun. I downloaded it, theres a readme file included, pretty good information.

Addendum:

HOLY GAWD, I COULD KISS YOU, but I wont.
It works. It boots up, brings you past the F6 prompt, prompts you to choose which OS installation you want to go into, I chose the 1st one ( I have 3 installs of XP PRO) then it prompts you for your admin password. After that the recovery console screen in black comes up, and WAMO your at the C:\Windows prompt. I can do a cd.. command and go back to C: to see the boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com io.sys, autoexec.bat, etc etc The only thing i couldnt do was do a ted or edit command on the boot.ini file to make changes to it, thats probably only because theres no ted file. But I have that on a floppy I can copy it over to the c: drive and go to town on the boot.ini . I was able to view it with the "Type" or "More" commands. So you can basically get in there to do all the fixmbr, bootcfg, chkdsk commands. Is that what you'd normally see if you'd gotten into the recovery console with a full version of XP Pro store bought? Is that what recovery console's purpose is? Whats the difference between the recovery and the repair features?

Before I did all this, the installation was easy as hell.
Downloaded the .zip file, extracted it to my desktop.
Opened the readme file contained in the .zip file
In the readme theres a link to microsoft's site to download an extractor.
Downloaded the file and stick it in the same folder you extracted the .zip to.
Got a Cd-r ready,
Double clicked the .bat file and it does the rest for you.
Tells you what to do step by step.
Just before the burning process it makes you agree to the EULA.
Don't worry about getting a burner program, one is included in the .zip which the .bat uses.
Let the burn begin !

And again so no one is confused I went here to do this.... Recovery console CD update
 
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To clarify the difference between a repair install and the recovery console is that the recovery console is used to issue commands and you must login whereas a repair install replaces bad files with good ones and acts almost as if you're re-installing, but you're not as all your programs/files are preserved. Having to login and such is what you'd get with a normal XP disc for the recovery console as well.

That slimmed down version I would imagine only contains the bare minimum for the recovery console, but nevertheless it sounds like you got what you were looking for.
 
Yeup, its pretty good to have when it comes to troubleshooting, I noticed from doing a bunch of troubleshooting with XP Pro, that when you have issues booting up and it freezes during the startup, either when the little line is going across the screen or you get a Blue screen of death, or even before that just after the bios before the bootloader, you cant see the menu for the recovery console command.

So installing recovery console to the harddrive is pointless, unless you've thought to do it pre-emptively.

Also, recovery console would be useless if you have an instance that I found myself in where my aunts laptop was powered off 2 or 3 times by a power outage and the battery was dead. It caused the drivers for the sata harddrive to go corrupt/missing. In that case, the recovery console installed to the harddrive would be null. So this is actually saving me a step, I now dont have to boot up another bootable OS to verify the C: drive is detected. Shortened the steps to trouble shoot it.

But only if this recovery console could read ntfs, that would great, I still have to boot up slax (bootable OS) to backup their files incase its beyond repair and I have to do a re-install of the whole OS. It can read/write to NTFS/Fat32/Ext2/3 with slax fortunately.

The bootable recovery console is great in the way that I can verify that those files are in the C:\Windows or C:\Windows\system32 or C:\Windows\servicepackfiles\I386 (XP Pro with a service pack) directories.

I spent all night last week putting together a floppy bootdisk for the sole purpose of being able to see those required windows files to verify if they were even there. If they were, I could either assume they were corrupted or narrow it further to being a registry issue with a driver or a service pack AND verify its not a SATA harddrive driver issue. I think I'll go raid the bakery down the road Im hungry.

Yeah im pretty happy with this, Now the only issue is, If someone can make a batch file that'll automatically check for the files in all three of those directories to verify their existance and do a automatic backup of the boot.ini so the user can run the bootcfg and the fixmbr etc.. So if those files are not corrupted and the boot.ini gets messed up, the user can revert back. So in the first posting, yeah a bootable repair cd for XP Pro that'll replace those required files and the user doesnt have to. Seems like the lazy method I agree, but to my folks who ask me how to attach a picture to an email its heaven. Heaven for me, not them, saves me from doing another demonstration.

So what do most computer repair shops do, backup everything and reinstall the whole OS most of the time?
 
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xterra said:
But only if this recovery console could read ntfs, that would great, I still have to boot up slax (bootable OS) to backup their files incase its beyond repair and I have to do a re-install of the whole OS. It can read/write to NTFS/Fat32/Ext2/3 with slax fortunately.
Click to expand...

And who saids recovery console can't read/write to an ntfs volume? It can, and its supposed to anyway. Its a tool for Windows, and therefore it must. Without ntfs support, you would not be able to read the volume and find files like boot.ini, etc. for recovery.

xterra said:
So what do most computer repair shops do, backup everything and reinstall the whole OS most of the time?
Click to expand...

Yep. Puts a bad rep on us tech guys, but when you work in the field and got bosses that want as much customers as possible with the least amount of expenses for parts/service or untrained workers thats the way it is. Than they turn around and nail you a good fee for the service, which is what makes places like NeoSmart so valuable to people because we try to provide as much support as possible over the internet free of charge.
 
Nix that ntfs comment I made, got my wires crossed, was thinking of something else. I must of stayed up too late, typos all over the place heh thanks for the help again. Just curious about slip streaming with Nlite, is it a good idea to slipstream in the drivers for sata drivers, audio and other (cant think of em at the moment) devices or is it better to put them on a different cd and install after windows is installed? Just realized where I made my mistake i think with slipstreaming, I think I told it to slipstream in the sata textmode drivers. Would that cause bsods ? Or should the sata drivers be installed always manually with the F6 key ?
 
The SATA drivers should not be slipstreamed into the installation CD. This will likely cause a BSOD. Hit F6 to install it manually from floppy.

That is likely why you had the trouble with slipstreaming before. :wink:

As for the audio drivers, I don't think there would be any trouble slipstreaming those, just as long as you make sure they will work with the model you're installing the OS on first though, so the installation doesn't end with some kind of error.

Jake
 
Thanks that answers that question / Got another

Good to know, I've tried once before installing sata drivers using a floppy usb drive, it did search, but it gave some kind of textoem error. Just wondering if that file dictates the order of how the sata drivers are installed. And if they do need to be in a certain order. This is my biggest headache. I'm using the usb floppy drive because obviously theres no built in floppy drive.
 
USB floopy should work fine with the correct driver files there. Perhaps the missing file error indicates another file you need on there in order to install it?
 
Found Sata Drivers

Did some more surfing, found this for the people having Sata Driver issues...
Vista x86 Masstorage DriversPack
at
DriverPacks.net Forum / Masstorage x86

Contains sata drivers for ATI Raid, RocketRaid, Intel Matrix Storage Manager, Intel ISCSI, Micron, JMicron, JMB38x, JMicron OHCI IEEE I394, Marvell 61xx Raid, Nvidia Nforce Sata & Raid, Silicon controllers/raid/softraid, Sis 180/182 Raid, ULi, VIA Sata IDE, MegaSR, IBM Serveraid, Inte. Raid, IBM ESXS/SAS, LSI Logic Megaraid, Dell SAS, Sun Storage, and on and on and on. Theres a readme file included. Folders 1-12. Read the readme to find which folder has the correct driver(s). Drag the appropriate folder to a floppy on a usb floppy drive. and F6 it. Had the compaq and Dell sata drivers i was looking for. Vista 32/64 bit versions.
May or may not work with XP, im still experiementing.
 
If not download the correct package. If you're using intel matrix storage driver, it should extract the files to where you specify. In that folder there should be a readme.txt with the instructions you'll need to load the driver correctly from floppy.
 
yes an no

Alot of those package managers only extract after you've installed windows bypassing the sata setting in bios. A compaq computer I worked on doesnt have that option in bios, so I had to find the exact drivers and stick them on a floppy disk. The dell dimension 9100 i have has the floppy extractor. Some dont from what im running into.
 
FYI, if you're trying to install XP, and that is what you need the sata driver for, you can check the BIOS. Usually there's some kind of option to change the operating mode of the sata controller. :wink: For example, in my BIOS, the AHCI operating mode was set by default, which XP wouldn't allow, and so I had to go into my BIOS, and switch from AHCI to ATA, which then allowed me to install XP no problems. Then once you're in XP, you simply install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver, and it'll function as a regular AHCI driver, eliminating the need to switch operating mode each time you want to boot into the other OS, if you're running a dual-boot. If the problem's the SATA driver, then you might be able to switch to IDE or "Compatibilty" mode, which would then allow you to install the OS, afterwards installing the IMSM driver, which there are versions of that function as a SATA driver, I believe.

Check out this link. It may help.

EDIT: Oh, I see what you're saying...
Some people's computers you've worked on don't have those options in the BIOS, so you can't install the IMSM. Well, it seems you would have to hunt down the exact drivers in those cases then, since it would be close to impossible to have all the different drivers for different models at hand when you need them. Though if installing by the floppy doesn't work for you, you could always slipstream them into the XP CD though of course you would still have to hunt down the appropriate drivers. Not much we can do there...
 
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hmmm / shotdown again

Someone told me in this thread you can't slipstream sata drivers, only video and other hardware. I've seen some sites that say you can slipstream sata drivers, which is confusing the fricken A out of me. Ok get this, I tried last night to install XP Pro 32 bit on a Dell Dimension 9100. Every driver I tried to load from the floppy disk was recognized by the menu where you get to choose which driver you want to use. Make sense? I thought so. My Main problem is getting my computer back to AHCI/Raid from Combination in Bios for the Sata Setting. So then... I choose the one it defaults too after F6, Ok I try it, tell it to install it, then every time it says it cannot find my harddrive. I've tried the Four different drivers from the Massstorage link above, no-luck-there. Then I think, ok I made sure to turn on AHCI/Raid in the bios, tried all four again, no luck. Ok so then I try the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, it says "Your Chipset needs to be updated first, so I go to Dell's site, find the newest chipset. Install it, reboot, Then I try installing The intel Matrix storage Manager, I take a few red pills, I get an error "Your hardware is not compatible with your software" The **** it isnt??? The hardware came with it when I bought it. Oh and I actually got past the textsetup.oem error i usually get by putting all the driver files in the root of the floppy. Wasnt detecting when it was in a folder. So here I sit. Im pursueing this because obviously I want to know where im making my mistake if I have to do this on someone else's computer which is 100% likely. So now you know and knowing is half the battle.
 
When done properly drivers can be slipstreamed in. That is one of many reasons why someone would want to slipstream.

Now if you cant install the drivers when you're in AHCI mode, you should install in SATA and update everything once the OS is up and running. If you're lucky after this, you should be able to change the settings from SATA to AHCI in the BIOS without XP BSODing on you. I can't speak for everyone here (such as cool who claims it works), but I have found I cannot get XP working on any of my Dell systems unless I use SATA mode. Vista well run under either of them but only in the mode it has been installed in.

My two cents anyway. If you can find the right drivers than what you want should be possible...
 
Well, it all depends on installing the "correct" version for *your* system. :wink: If you do that, then the Intel Matrix Storage Manager should allow you to keep your BIOS set to AHCI setting, and still boot into the OS you installed it to. Now, speaking for myself alone, I only had to install the version found at the following link:

Lenovo Support & downloads - Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver for Windows XP, Vista (32bit) - ThinkPad


and follow the instructions that I quote below
Note: If you do not have a diskette drive, you can install Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver by the following alternative procedure:

If you do not have a diskette drive, you can install Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver by the following alternative procedure:


  1. Start the BIOS Setup Utility menu.
  2. Select Config.
  3. Select Serial ATA (SATA).
  4. Select Compatibility.
  5. Install Windows XP and Service Pack 2.
  6. Download Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver from the Web site and extract the driver to C:\DRIVERS\WIN\IMSM.
  7. Run Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver. To do this, go to C:\DRIVERS\WIN\IMSM\PREPARE, and double-click install.cmd.
  8. Turn the computer off and then on again.
  9. Start the BIOS Setup Utility menu.
  10. Select Config.
  11. Select Serial ATA (SATA).
  12. Select AHCI.
  13. Start Windows XP. The Welcome to the Found New Hardware Wizard appears.
  14. Click No, not this time and click Next.
  15. Select Install from a list or specific location(Advanced), then click Next.
  16. Select Search for the best driver in these locations. Then select Include this location in the search:, specify the path, C:\DRIVERS\WIN\IMSM, and click Next. The Completing the Found New Hardware Wizard appears.
  17. Click Finish.
  18. When the System Settings Change window appears, click Yes. The computer restarts.
Click to expand...
from the same page to see it work. :wink: Now I can't claim that will work for everyone, but I do know for a fact it worked for me. Here are the facts...
Before I installed the Intel Matrix Storage driver, I was only able to boot into XP with my sata controller operating mode set to ATA, which really sucked because I wasn't able to boot into Vista with that setting. Vista would only boot with AHCI setting, meaning I would constantly have to go into the BIOS each time I wanted to boot into the other OS, to set it to the right operating mode for the OS I was trying to boot into. If I just tried booting into XP with it still set to AHCI, I would get a BSOD every time. :frowning:
After I installed the Intel Matrix Storage driver using the above quoted instructions, I no longer had that problem, and was able to permenately keep the operating mode set to AHCI mode no matter what OS I was trying to boot into, which was really great because it was a pain to have to go into the BIOS every time I wanted to boot into the other OS, to change the stupid sata controller mode! >.< And I have also read that the AHCI mode is better anyway. I guess its supposed to be more technolgically advanced. :wink:

So by installing the IMSM, I was able to solve that problem, and now both OSes boot perfectly normal. :grinning:

Jake
 
No XP Pro i386 folder! ?

JustinW said:
Hello xterra, welcome to NST

Create an XP install disk from the i386 folder on your system. Use that to either recover the system with recovery console, repair install, or re-install.
Click to expand...

Is their any way to be notified by eMail if and when I get any response to this?

Hi,
I'm making Vista & XP Pro Emergency Recovery Disks.
I'm quite surprised to find out that their is NO 'i386' Windows XP Pro folder per say which is quite strange. I've never seen this before ?
I recently reinstalled XP Pro and it works just fine.

I DO have i386 folders in the following folders:
- Windows\ServicePackFiles\
- Windows\DriverCache\
- Windows\System32\ReInstallBackUps\00!!\DriverFiles\
- 'Windows\System32\spool\XPSEP\i386\' (sp3)
The search results also indicate that their is an 'i386' under the 'Windows\Inf\' folder, but I only see numerous inf files there and no 'i386' folder per say.

So I'm using the files from the XP Pro 'Windows\ServicePackFiles\' (3) folder.
I would think that this is obviously going to have to be 'bootable'

I do have Vista as well as XP Pro on this same machine. But these two OS are both on completely separate RAID arrays. But I don't use any Dual/Multi boot app. It defaults to Vista and when I want to get into XP Pro, I select it with an optional BIOS StartUp routine.
I'd like to know before hand that this XP Emergency Repair setup is going to work for me rather than finding out the hard way that it won't when I actually need it.

I'm thinking about putting the Vista Emergency Repair Disk as well as the XP Pro Emergency Repair Disk onto USB Flash memory sticks, which my computer will boot to. As I use these for other files as well, I'll just add these back again after (burning the Vista iso image) to the USB flash drive. However I don't know if the one made on the Vista iso image will still allow me to use the remaining storage space on the Flash Drive or if it will limit it to the size of the iso image?

If anyone has experience and knows about the feasibility, workability and functionality of these rather unusual obscure procedures, please let me know.

Thanks,
DougRH
 
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