[alastair70]

Hi Guys, I'm looking for some help.

My trusty laptop (EI Systems 3102 bought new in 2007 with a 120GB Seagate HD) got switched off at the mains the other day and ever since won't boot. I know it's a problem with the hard disk as I upgraded the disk a few years ago and still have the original which i plugged in and it started up first time. The DVD drive is dead and has been for a while.

The disk in question is running Xp Pro SP3 and when removed and plugged in to a desktop, could be seen and files moved about so the disk is working so there is something wrong with the boot up.Whilst in my desktop, I ran a virus scan on it and noting was found, I also ran Seagate disk tools tests and they all came back as OK

After loads of reading I found out about PEbuilder and PE2usb. I built an image from my XP SP3 disk on my desktop PC then used PE2usb made a "supposerly" bootable usb drive. The most that happened was i got a single flash of a "_" in the top left hand corner of the screen.

I downloaded AVG Rescue disk for USB and when it loaded it said a linux file was missing (ldlinux.c32) and didn't load.

I have tried everything i can think of to try and get a USB disk booting even better would be one with my XP setup files on so that i can try and repair my installation.

Any help please

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Hello alastair70

Couple of questions if I may;

Is the HDD detected in the E system 3102 BIOS.
Have you tried booting into Safe Mode by tapping the F8 key when you restart the notebook.
Has "Last known good configuration" been tried.
Did you back up all important data on the drive when it was hooked up to your desktop.

As an asides you may need to try and borrow an external USB CD/DVD player in order to resolve this, this would allow you to run a repair installation with an XP disk if you have access to one or a Recovery Console Disk that you can create yourself, the latter is provided courtesy of Artellos and the information can be found Here

[phillpower2]

Hello alastair70

Couple of questions if I may;

Is the HDD detected in the E system 3102 BIOS.
Have you tried booting into Safe Mode by tapping the F8 key when you restart the notebook.
Has "Last known good configuration" been tried.
Did you back up all important data on the drive when it was hooked up to your desktop.

As an asides you may need to try and borrow an external USB CD/DVD player in order to resolve this, this would allow you to run a repair installation with an XP disk if you have access to one or a Recovery Console Disk that you can create yourself, the latter is provided courtesy of Artellos and the information can be found Here

[alastair70]

Hi, thanks for your reply.
Yes the disk is seen in the BIOS. Yes I have tried last good known config, and the HDD light flashes twice and then nothing happens, I've even left it 40 mins in case it was just very slow.
Yes I have tried booting into all 3 safe modes and each time it stalls at windows\system32\config\system and again it doesn't matter how long I leave it nothing else happens.

With regards to the recovery console, I have been trying to get my USB drives bootable with no success. The drive is seen by the BIOS and is set to being the first device but nothing happens.
I have found a brand new DVD drive on eBay today which considering mine is not a common system I am lucky and it will be here sometime next week.

I have backed up everything, but am now curious as to get recovery console or xp install working on a USB drive.
I'd love to hear your thoughts if you can give me any tips

Cheers
Alastair

Edited by alastair70, 17 November 2013 - 09:55 AM.

[phillpower2]

Hello alastair70

I have never had the need to use the USB method with XP but have heard that Rufus is highly regarded, please see Here

Not sure if you have seenThis

Edited by phillpower2, 17 November 2013 - 10:58 AM.
Link added

[alastair70]

Please mark as solved with help from wonka the sane from reboot.pro

Edited by alastair70, 19 November 2013 - 04:06 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Can you share the resolution Wonka gave as it may help others with the same issue.

[alastair70]

Certainly i will.

We added a completely useless line to the boot.ini file to see if it was booting that far, and it did.

I was told to download HDHacker and sent him copies of the partition table and the MBR, which apprantly were both fine. I was then instructed to make copies of both the laptop & desktop (as that is running the same OS) directories and Wonko found that I had copies of System & Software files in windows\system\config folder which he thought correctly were corrupt. The copies were stored in the windows\ERUNT folder.

With the laptop drive in the desktop PC as a slave drive we first made a backup of ..\windows\system32\config folder and then copied the 2 files from ..\windows\ERUNT to the ..\windows\system32\config folder.

This solved the problem although as the copied files were 7 weeks old it meant that any software that had been installed since that time it wasn't in the registry, so had to be re-installed. Also my anti-virus wasn't working so i had to re-install that as well. The other problem was that about a month ago I could connect to the internet with a browser so I used RogueKiller to fix this problem as I had previously.

I was then told to clean up my registry either using HijackThis, ComboFix or Regseeker. I choose Regseeker for no particular reason

The laptop is running great now though seeing as i have a new dvd drive which turned up 2 hours after we had fixed the laptop, I am inclined to wipe the disk and put a clean install of windows on as it is currently 2.5 years old.

You can read the forum here I do hope this helps anyone with a similar problem

[rshaffer61]

OK I'm just curious with this statement you made.

I was then instructed to make copies of both the laptop & desktop (as that is running the same OS) directories and Wonko found that I had copies of System & Software files in windows\system\config folder which he thought correctly were corrupt.

Are you saying the same installation registration number was used on both systems or did you copy the OS from one system to the other?

[alastair70]

It is a MS Select version of XP Pro SP3, and yes they were installed from the same disk. I'm not overly sure what the commands meant, or how Wonko managed to read the files that were created if you have a look at post number 25 at the bottom of page 1 I am sure you will understand more than i did.

[rshaffer61]

Basically rebuilding the boot.ini file, system file in the registry and recovering lost sectors on the HD is what was done.

I'm still a little loss as to the installation too. You said you used the same disk to install to both systems but my question actually is if the same registration number was used for both systems.

[alastair70]

why do you want to know? Do you work for Mircosoft?

[rshaffer61]

Nope just a standard question I always ask. I'm sorry I offended you and since everything is working correctly now we can conclude the issue has been resolved.
Congratulations. for a successful resolution for your issue.

I'm glad we could help and please let us know how everything works out for you.
If there is anything else we can do to help please feel free to ask. I appreciate that you allowed us to assist you with your issue and for your patience.
Thank you for choosing GeeksToGo for help.
This issue now appears to be resolved.


If other members are reading this and have a similar problem please begin a New Topic and someone will assist you as soon as possible

[alastair70]

they do have the same serial, it just seems a very odd question to ask. Apprantly once we add a totally useless line to the boot.ini it started to display the start up options. When the hard disk was checked with chkdsk it never showed any faults, so I guess it was a process of elimination that it had to be the registry. One thing I would like to know, is now that I have got the system running properly again and reinstalled the software that needed doing how do i make the ERUNT folder update the software and system file on a regular basis?

[rshaffer61]

You have to run erunt manually anytime you want to backup the registry. One thing to remember is the erunt is only backing up the registry in case something goes wrong with it. It in reality does not backup software but only the location entry in the registry.

[alastair70]

ok thanks for clearing that up. I am still thinking of wiping the HDD clean and re-installing now that my new DVD drive has turned up. What is your preferred method of cleaning a disk in preparation of a clean install?

Edited by alastair70, 21 November 2013 - 09:09 AM.