Booting Into Dos *fixed enough* edit:not really*

joshua1

Hey all, a quick question.

I just deleted daemon tools in a PC clean up and as a final parting shot, it raped my PC. The file SPTD.sys associated with it causes my PC to stall and crash whilst booting. One of the more common fixes I see online is just to delete the .sys file. So here's the question. How can I boot into DOS on windows XP SP2? As a laptop =/= a: drive. So that leaves USB keys and CD's. Looking at bootdisk.com and the windows service center I can only find bootdisks that involve the floppy drives. Can I just bang this on a CD/USB key and change the boot order in bios? Is deleting the file a good way to go about this? Any help is appreciated.

Azio

Press F8 when it's starting up, select "Command Prompt Only". Although I think you should just use Safe Mode.

joshua1

as in from the advanced start up mode? Still stalls and hangs. Thats why I know its SPTD.sys thats the file the boot fails on. Unless there is some other safe mode?

Locust76

Did you uninstall this program or just outright delete it?

You should be able to boot XP into safe mode (with or without command prompt) and remove the offending file (better yet, remove references to it in the registry) and restart without having to resort to booting to DOS (which can't really edit NTFS partitions anyway, unless you go through the headache of getting NTFS drivers and shit for DOS).

Locust76

Damn, too slow... If you can't get in to safe mode your best bet would be to boot from the XP CD and repair your installation or use the recovery console (which sounds cool, but it's just a command prompt)

joshua1

Uninstalled properly, which is why im kinda pissed that this file is still hanging around. Well, command prompt would be dandy, but its still fails before I can actually command anything. All forms of safemode fail to boot into windows even when I abort loading the .sys file. The two BSOD's I'm getting involve 1: Unmountable_boot_volume. The one occurs if i don't try to skip the .sys 2: a BSOD directly referencing the SPTD.sys file. "the driver mistakenly marked a part of it's image pagable instead of nonpagable"

So am I pretty much boned since safemode is failing? I really don't want the hassle of a fresh install again. Thanks for the help so far.

Locust76

Try using the XP install disc (if you have one, hopefully you do) to repair your windows installation.

joshua1

Im going to try and dig out my XP disc..... it could be anywhere. Blah. Thanks for the help guys.

joshua1

So, ransacking all places that could conceal a CD, I have concluded that my XP cd is at my parents place. 100kms away. So the question is, is there another program, preferably freeware, that will allow me to access and edit/delete files from a NTFS HDD? Or should I just shelve my PC until I can get my XP cd?

TychoCelchuuu

If anyone you know has a BartPE disc lying around you could use that.

Gdiguy

Depending on your level of desperateness, I *believe* the Ubuntu live cd (which is basically the install cd, but it also lets you boot ubuntu off the CD similar to booting XP off the XP install CD) now comes with NTFS support that is much better than it used to be... reading NTFS you can definitely do, writing I think works fine, so you could download & burn that and give it a shot

Erandus

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

If anyone you know has a BartPE disc lying around you could use that.

I second the BartPE. Its freeware and if you know anyone else with a pc that has a cd burner, the setup and disc creation is pretty simple. Just the default build has command prompt options and a file explorer that will let you dig around and delete anything from your drive.

If you need help with the disc, PM me. If I get my PC running again soon (I just moved) I could even send you an iso of the Bart disc I use.

joshua1

I got my hands on BartPE, and created a boot disk with it using another windows pc. It booted fine, but I can't access the drive, my C:. Any hints?

Chrono Helix

Are you having something like your hard disk is unable to recognise its own hard disk? It thinks all the drives are removable, and no disks are inserted? I'm having the same problem, and I'm beginning to think my com's screwed.

Erandus

Its a laptop, I assume no RAID? Only thing i can think of off the top of my head is that there's some sort of IDE/SATA driver that the BART disk does not have by default. Tracking down and adding drivers for PE is annoying if you're not practised at it. It can be done and if you wish to pursue it, I'll try to lend assistance, but it's complicated.

At this point, I would suggest going to your local computer store and finding a 2.5" external enclosure. This would allow you to remove the harddrive from your laptop, insert it into the enclosure, and then plug it in to another PC via USB, and do what you need to the file structure. Laptop drive enclosures are cheap, and most electronics dealers either stock or will order them.

You're looking for products like this or the top two items listed here.

If that doesn't work, then i would try reinstalling Windows over your current installation.

joshua1

Yeah, plugging my HDD into another computer was my first choice of action, but spending the money and effort.... haha. To chrono-helix, no my computer isn't doing that, but i have had that happen to another PC, and i'm fairly sure a windows repair fixed that. Thanks for all the help so far!