Hard drive crash?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark C.
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark C.

Two problems. First, I get a message at startup "cannot find
system32\drivers\pci.sys" Second, when I try to repair the hard drive using
the XP setup cd, It asks me for the admin password. I don't recall ever
setting up a password for admin on this system. I have a lot of files I need
to rescue. TIA

Mark
 
Mark said:
Two problems. First, I get a message at startup "cannot find
system32\drivers\pci.sys" Second, when I try to repair the hard drive using
the XP setup cd, It asks me for the admin password. I don't recall ever
setting up a password for admin on this system. I have a lot of files I need
to rescue. TIA

Mark
Click to expand...

If what you are attempting is a repair install, here are a couple
references. It sounds like you entered the recovery console perhaps ?

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_install.htm
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

An alternative is to try Safe Mode, but maybe you tried that
already. If pci.sys was really missing, maybe Safe Mode won't
work without that file.

Another way to access an NTFS disk, is to boot the computer with a
Knoppix or Ubuntu LiveCD. Those are Linux distributions, which don't
need to install to the hard drive to work. You simply boot the
computer with the CD, and have a working environment. An NTFS disk
can be mounted read-only, simply by clicking on it. You can use
a terminal window, and use cd and ls, to traverse around the
foreign disk.

If you connected a blank disk, you could format it in FAT32. Then copy
any files you want, from the NTFS disk to the FAT32 disk. Out of the
box, these Linux options can probably handle FAT32 in read/write, but
NTFS could still be read only. There are some projects that have
achieved R/W status for NTFS, but they may not be hooked up in the
default Linux configuration.

There are undoubtedly a number of other options that would work, in
terms of environments giving access to the disk. If the disk is formatted
NTFS, then things like DOS wouldn't work. So generally, you'd need a
more recent option.

Just some guesses,
Paul
 
Mark C. said:
Two problems. First, I get a message at startup "cannot find
system32\drivers\pci.sys" Second, when I try to repair the hard
drive using the XP setup cd, It asks me for the admin password. I
don't recall ever setting up a password for admin on this system.
I have a lot of files I need to rescue. TIA
Click to expand...

You have committed a personal computing felony (against yourself) by
not having removable media copies of your important files.

At this time, you do not do anything except attempt to make a copy
of your files or the entire hard drive. Your only concern is to
preserve and copy the files you "need to rescue". You're not
concerned about repairing anything. You need to determine the
shortest and safest path to copying the data you say needs rescuing,
and then do it.

Only then, only after you have corrected the mistake of not having a
copy, then you can attempt to troubleshoot things.

How seriously you take the appropriate path depends on how serious
you are about recovering your files. It's your call.

Good luck.
 
Two problems. First, I get a message at startup "cannot find
system32\drivers\pci.sys" Second, when I try to repair the hard drive using
the XP setup cd, It asks me for the admin password. I don't recall ever
setting up a password for admin on this system. I have a lot of files I need
to rescue. TIA

Mark
Click to expand...
And I take it you've just tried pressing ENTER at the password request,
in case there is no password.
 
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