Problems reinstalling XP Media Center Edition

clsCorwin

So I'm fixing a friend's laptop (Dell Inspiron E1705). When I first got it, it would get an error on boot that NTOSKRNL was corrupt or missing. Tried copying over a new one from my XP Pro SP2 CD and still got the same error.

Nuked that partition, created a new one and booted from his Dell provided XP MCE install disc. Have a couple hiccups along the way, as I get prompted to find the location of various files and I have to manually point it to \I386 for them. Install finishes, and I get a new error, that Windows\System32\Config\System is missing or corrupt.

Odds things: They have the hard drive split into 4 partitions, 1 called MEDIADIRECT thats FAT32 and sized 2047 MB, 1 FAT partition thats 47 MB, another FAT32 thats 5020 MB, and finally the C: partition thats NTFS and 107356 MB.

So anyone got any ideas what I can do to fix this damn thing?

PeregrineFalcon

clsCorwin wrote: »

So I'm fixing a friend's laptop (Dell Inspiron E1705). When I first got it, it would get an error on boot that NTOSKRNL was corrupt or missing. Tried copying over a new one from my XP Pro SP2 CD and still got the same error.

Nuked that partition, created a new one and booted from his Dell provided XP MCE install disc. Have a couple hiccups along the way, as I get prompted to find the location of various files and I have to manually point it to \I386 for them. Install finishes, and I get a new error, that Windows\System32\Config\System is missing or corrupt.

Odds things: They have the hard drive split into 4 partitions, 1 called MEDIADIRECT thats FAT32 and sized 2047 MB, 1 FAT partition thats 47 MB, another FAT32 thats 5020 MB, and finally the C: partition thats NTFS and 107356 MB.

So anyone got any ideas what I can do to fix this damn thing?

First thing you should try here is to boot the Dell recovery partition (the 47/5020MB ones) by spamming the shit out of Ctrl-F11 at the BIOS screen, and let it do the magical mystical restoration. (At least I think Ctrl-F11 is the Dell hotkey for restore-from-partition.)

I remember this happening with another system before; if the recovery partition won't boot, you might have to do the following

Go to "Disk Management" and flag the Recovery Partition (drive D) as "Active." Reboot, and press F11 as it starts up, and you should be in.

clsCorwin

Good try, however after some googling to verify its ctrl-f11 (it is) i found that reinstalling windows breaks their utility. I can't get into windows at all from this thing to make the partition active, either.

PeregrineFalcon

Try one of these three:

1. Reinstalling Windows into the large empty partition and using Disk Manager
2. Use the Recovery Console out of Windows Setup to flag the partition as active (DISKPART works from there, right?)
3. Use a live Linux CD with a partition manager on it

clsCorwin

1) already tried and failed

2) diskpart does work, yes, but I have no option to flag any partition as active, only create and delete.

3) I have a crunchbang live cd. whats the partition manager packaged with it?

PeregrineFalcon

clsCorwin wrote: »

1) already tried and failed

2) diskpart does work, yes, but I have no option to flag any partition as active, only create and delete.

3) I have a crunchbang live cd. whats the partition manager packaged with it?

1) Damn.
2) You tried setting focus to the target partition (select disk/partition/volume) and then issuing the active command? What error did it spit out?
3) No idea, haven't used that one, but probably gparted since it seems to be pilfering some other stuff from GNOME.

Visti

Gparted should be able to do it, alright. I'm fairly positive that it's on the Crunch CD.

clsCorwin

Diskpart that runs off of the recovery console brings up the basic create/delete partition screen you see when installing. Can't flag active or not. Tried flagging it active from command prompt but I get no feedback and it still failed.

bobmyknob

I had a similar issue in trying to get access to the recovery partition. I ended up using Ghost 8 and loading it up from a live cd and just having it restore the image file.

clsCorwin

Gparted my way into forcing the recovery partition to boot, and it can't load the kernel file.

Fuck this thing already.

travathian

clsCorwin wrote: »

So I'm fixing a friend's laptop . . . .

You see, this here, that was your first mistake!

theclam

Have you ruled out hardware problems? Try the Dell Hardware Diagnostics (hold Fn while powering the computer on or just press F12 while POSTing).

If there aren't any, why not just delete all the partitions and install to one big one?

clsCorwin

Fun. Hard drive failed DST short test.

clsCorwin

chkdsk /p reports one or more errors on the volume. chkdsk /r is sitting at 50% complete and has been all night.

travathian

clsCorwin wrote: »

Fun. Hard drive failed DST short test.

Stop right there. If it failed, it should have given you some sort of diagnostic code. RMA the drive and give them that code.

clsCorwin

Its out of warranty.

Came back in the morning to find chkdsk /r finally worked its magic, and a subsequent /p showed no errors. Install went fine this time.

travathian

Backup the data asap. Run the manufacturer's diagnostic test on the drive, if it fails that, replace it asap. Passing a chkdsk is only one part of the equation, there are other things that can go wrong. And frankly, hard drives are dirt cheap now, so replacing it is a pretty darn small cost.

clsCorwin

Its not my computer, so I ain't replacing anything. I already backed the data up booting into #! and transferring to an external drive. Once its operational I'm giving it back with th warning you'll need a new hard drive soon.