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No Repair or Recovery Console Option...


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#1
ClemP

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I have a working XP Pro SP2 installation on my 7 year old system. I recently obtained a working system that has a faster, more robust motherboard. I want to transfer my existing drives & hardware to this new system. I've read that in order to do this properly, I'll need to run an XP Repair after installing the drives in the new system but prior to booting into XP. In order to prepare for the transfer, I wanted to make sure that I can get to the Repair option. I booted my system to my XP Pro setup disk (slipstreamed with SP2). I never saw an option to repair the system using the Recovery Console (I've previously installed the Recovery Console on this system, can that cause Setup to bypass the Recovery Console option?) or the option to Repair an existing XP installation. I get to the screen that shows all my drives and partitions and asks if i want to do a clean install of XP on an existing partition, create a new partition, delete a partition, or exit.

I've tried running bootcfg /rebuild from the recovery console and the existing installation is NOT found. I've started running fixmbr and it states that a non-standard or invalid Master Boot Record was found and that if I run fixmbr it may make my system unbootable. I've got too much data and too many applications on this drive to have to do a clean install. I have NOT tried fixboot.

Has anyone else run into this before? If so, how did you fix it? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm lucky in that I have a working system, so it's more annoying in my case than anything else. However, strangely enough, I'm a PC/Systems Consultant that, just 2 days ago, was called to a customer's location where they were getting a "Disk read error..." when trying to boot their system. After determining that the drive was physically OK (used the Ultimate Boot CD to determine that drive and data was readable), I tried everything, that I'd tried above, on the customer's drive, with the same results as on my drive. The difference here is that the customer no longer has a working system. I had to temporarily install his drive into another machine so that the customer could access the data and work with it. So, I'm sure that any suggestions that can help me with my system will also help me with my customer's system.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide...

Clem Patafio
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#2
Murray S.

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Howdy and welcome to GTG:

You don't run the repair option through the Recovery Console. It is it's own separate option.

See THIS TUTORIAL.

Murray

Edited by Murray S., 07 January 2008 - 09:17 AM.

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#3
ClemP

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Thanks for your quick reply, Murray. However, you may have misread my post. I realize that the Repair option is separate from the Recovery Console. I wasn't trying to run it from within the RC. I was saying that neither the Recovery Console option nor the Repair option were available when I ran the XP setup.

I've tried everything I've read in the posts, except for FIXBOOT or FIXMBR, and still cannot see either of these options when I boot from the setup CD. The disturbing thing is that, when I ran Bootcfg /rebuild (or /scan), the only XP installations that appear are 2 directories that I have on 2 different drives that contain the i386 directory. After seeing this, I copied the i386 directory to the drive that contains my XP installation. However, when I restarted the system and ran bootcfg /scan, it still did not find the actual installation. As for FIXMBR, is it safe to run it, even when it reports that there is a non-standard or invalid mbr and that running it could cause the partitions to become unreadable? Any thoughts?

Clem

Edited by ClemP, 07 January 2008 - 10:28 AM.

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#4
Murray S.

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Did you read the tutorial?

If you did, then you would see the option to do a Repair comes after you choose to install XP.

Murray
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#5
ClemP

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Thanks again for such a quick response, Murray. Perhaps I'm not explaining myself correctly. I checked out the tutorial. It confirmed the issue I'm having. Per the tutorial, there should be a page that asks if you want to install XP or repair the installation by using the Recovery Console. After selecting the first option (Install XP) you should see the page where you can either Repair an existing XP installation, Create a new partition, delete the partition or exit. As I mentioned above, I never see the first page that asks if you want to install XP or repair it using the Recovery Console (nor do I see the EULA page), and when I get to the "final" installation page, the only options I see are to Install XP, Create a Partition, Delete a Partition, or exit.

I'm not sure why this is happening. I've previously installed the Recovery Console on my system so that it appears in my Boot Menu. Can this cause the Recovery Console option page not to appear?

Thanks again for your interest and quick response...

Clem
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#6
Ztruker

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Clem, this sounds a lot like a XP CD created using nLite to slipstream SP2 + updates. Is this how you created the slipstreamed CD? If so, try Autostreamer instead. Here is a little write up I have on using it:

The simplest way to create a Bootable Windows XP Pro or Home Installation CD Slipstreamed with SP2 is to use Autostreamer. You point to your XP Pro/Home CD, the SP2 Service Pack .exe file, give it a path to write the .iso file to and off it goes. In 5 or 10 minutes you have a .iso file that you can burn to CD with almost any CD burner program you want to use. I used Roxio 7. There is a good freeware burner called DeepBurner which will do this also.

Here is the link to Autostreamer:
http://www.softpedia...ostreamer.shtml

You can download the SP2 .exe here:
http://www.microsoft...;displaylang=en

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#7
ClemP

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Ztruker,
Thanks for the head's up. I took your advice and recreated my slipstreamed disk using AutoStreamer... IT WORKED! I can only guess that you've seen this issue before and that's how you knew that nLite can cause this. At least, now I can move my XP drive to the new system and do a repair to allow it to reconfigure to the new system.

Thanks again for all your help...

Clem
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#8
Ztruker

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nLite is a marvelous tool. I use it all the time at the shop, but it has it's quirks, this is one of them. Glad it helped and thanks for letting me know.

Edit: I think you can actually get the RC back by turning off Fully Automated Install, or something like that, but that defeats one of the the main purposes of using nLite for me.

Edited by Ztruker, 08 January 2008 - 07:39 PM.

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#9
ClemP

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Hi Ztruker,

Thanks again for your help! I've only used nLite to create the slipstreamed XP CD. What are the pros/cons of using nLite vs. AutoStreamer? If you could either give me a few pointers on using one vs. the other or at least point me to a good resource for this, I'd really appreciate it. If you can't, that's OK, too. You've helped immensely by helping me resolve this problem!

Now I can move my XP SP2 drives from my current PC to a new Chassis/Motherboard and properly do a Repair so that all the new hardware will be discovered!

Thanks again...

Clem
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#10
Ztruker

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Hi Clem, thanks for moving this discussion back to the forum.

I use nLite to slipstream SP2 but I also slip stream all Windows Updates. I just built a new nLite Cd that includes all updates through December (no IE7). Saves a lot of download time after install. I also pre-answer all the install questions so when I install from a nLite CD, I select the partition, tell it to format or not and I'm done. 40-45 minutes later I boot to a newly installed copy of XP with all my preferences already set.

I force everything except the theme to Classic view, create the user name I want as Administrator, all folders in Details view, no Web page junk, no Active desktop, max color resolution at 1024x768, The only thing I need to do after the install is enable QuickLaunch and I could automate that if I can find the registry changes needed to make it happen.

The one major drawback is, since I specify Fully Automated, I do not get a choice of using the Repair Console. That's why I keep a Autostreamer SP2 version CD around.
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#11
brute force

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Hi Clem, thanks for moving this discussion back to the forum.

I use nLite to slipstream SP2 but I also slip stream all Windows Updates. I just built a new nLite Cd that includes all updates through December (no IE7). Saves a lot of download time after install. I also pre-answer all the install questions so when I install from a nLite CD, I select the partition, tell it to format or not and I'm done. 40-45 minutes later I boot to a newly installed copy of XP with all my preferences already set.

I force everything except the theme to Classic view, create the user name I want as Administrator, all folders in Details view, no Web page junk, no Active desktop, max color resolution at 1024x768, The only thing I need to do after the install is enable QuickLaunch and I could automate that if I can find the registry changes needed to make it happen.

The one major drawback is, since I specify Fully Automated, I do not get a choice of using the Repair Console. That's why I keep a Autostreamer SP2 version CD around.


that is terrific. im trying to do the same thing. seems like i have everything but i need to change the username. another words, 45 minutes after i put the cd in , i have a newly installed xp. but i am in as administrator. i dont want to leave the machine as admin. how do i get it to change to a username? thanks for your help
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#12
maynk

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I am trying to recover my XP. 

 

 

I don't get the  1: C:\WINDOWS on recovery console so I can't choose the system.

 

all I get is the command prompt C:\> Help plz


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