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WinXP SP2 won't load welcome screen and I'm a lazy bastard
Trentus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Spoilered for being just a ranty story, most of which isn't really relevant.
tl;dr
So, to those who have faced a similar problem, and solved it without just blasting it away, I would like to hear your suggestions. Or even if you just have a good idea, let me know. I would not particularly like to hear "stop being a lazy prick and just nuke the thing", but you're probably right and I can't stop you anyway.
Okay, so a neighbour was having a problem with his XP SP2 machine a week or so ago. The thing would boot up but when it came time to load the Welcome screen, all he would get was a black screen with a cursor (even in safe mode). I offered to get a document he needed off it when I got back into town. I got held up, he got impatient, and took it to a neighbour who owns a computer shop. Dude did a virus scan (and apparently removed what he found), but couldn't retrieve the document. Doesn't know how to take ownership and change permissions apparently. And I guess linux would just scare him... Anyway, I get in, hook up neighbours HD to my laptop with handy dandy PATA/SATA to USB connector and grab the file. It's a Microsoft Works document that's fucking 40MB big... when I tried to convert it it just hung. Oh well, stiff shit.
Now, I'm actually going to try and fix the machine. The plan of attack was an orbital strike. I've backed up his user profile and scanned it with NOD32, which found nothing (had to use windows... two of the partitions on my external HD don't mount in any other OS, even when I use the force option... but that's a story for another time), gathered together his driver disks and any other install media that came with the machine, and was just about to deploy the nuke when I decided that if there was even a small chance I could get his machine going again without having to reinstall all his crap, I'd much rather that. Scanned the entire disk, found nothing. Tried a chkdsk. Claims it fixed some errors, but didn't seem to solve the problem. Any other suggestions?
Now, I'm actually going to try and fix the machine. The plan of attack was an orbital strike. I've backed up his user profile and scanned it with NOD32, which found nothing (had to use windows... two of the partitions on my external HD don't mount in any other OS, even when I use the force option... but that's a story for another time), gathered together his driver disks and any other install media that came with the machine, and was just about to deploy the nuke when I decided that if there was even a small chance I could get his machine going again without having to reinstall all his crap, I'd much rather that. Scanned the entire disk, found nothing. Tried a chkdsk. Claims it fixed some errors, but didn't seem to solve the problem. Any other suggestions?
tl;dr
- WinXP SP2 won't load welcome screen. Black background and cursor instead. Even in safe mode. Also won't boot from various Linux live CDs (Ubuntu, Slax, DSL...)
- Malware was removed by some dude. Thus I have no idea what was on the thing. My scans reveal it does not persist.
- Preparations have been made and the orbital strike is primed. All that is left to do is to give the order.
- I decided I'm a lazy bastard and would rather not go through the hassle of reinstalling all his shitty apps.
So, to those who have faced a similar problem, and solved it without just blasting it away, I would like to hear your suggestions. Or even if you just have a good idea, let me know. I would not particularly like to hear "stop being a lazy prick and just nuke the thing", but you're probably right and I can't stop you anyway.
Trentus on
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Posts
Boot off of the CD
Choose the install option Enter
Choose the repair option if if finds enough of his old install to fix
This is not the recovery console