XP fails to boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim C.
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim C.

Short as possible...Supposed failed hard drive shen eror
message stated "no hard drive found, no optical drive
found" and BIOS did not list them as well. Unable to run
diagnostics from CD, or recover using CD.Ordered
HD. "fooled around" on Dell laptop 8200(with no real help
from Dell except the new HD) and managed to somehow get
the HD/CD recognized by BIOS.Downloaded Dianostcs to
Floppy and ran with all Passes on both(includingself
diag,read,write,seek) Was able to correct HAL/vgaoem
errors thn ran into registry file failure
(\SYSTEMROOT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SAM)corrupt, absentor not
writeable. Tried Recovery option from the 1stscreen and
chkdsk \p \r with no errors found. Went to second recovery
option to attempt to restore and received message"Setup
cannot set the required Windows XP configuration
information. This indicates an internal setup error.
Contact your system administrator, which is ME?
Have been trying to save just a few settings/files from
this nonbacked up drive(don'chastise, have learned the
hard way). Is there anything else to do to successfully
boot into WINXP, or must I accept the reformat and full
nstallatio,etc.? Sorry so longwinded,but little help from
the powers that be....
 
Jim C. said:
Short as possible...Supposed failed hard drive shen eror
message stated "no hard drive found, no optical drive
found" and BIOS did not list them as well. Unable to run
diagnostics from CD, or recover using CD.Ordered
HD. "fooled around" on Dell laptop 8200(with no real help
from Dell except the new HD) and managed to somehow get
the HD/CD recognized by BIOS.Downloaded Dianostcs to
Floppy and ran with all Passes on both(includingself
diag,read,write,seek) Was able to correct HAL/vgaoem
errors thn ran into registry file failure
(\SYSTEMROOT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SAM)corrupt, absentor not
writeable. Tried Recovery option from the 1stscreen and
chkdsk \p \r with no errors found. Went to second recovery
option to attempt to restore and received message"Setup
cannot set the required Windows XP configuration
information. This indicates an internal setup error.
Contact your system administrator, which is ME?
Have been trying to save just a few settings/files from
this nonbacked up drive(don'chastise, have learned the
hard way). Is there anything else to do to successfully
boot into WINXP, or must I accept the reformat and full
nstallatio,etc.? Sorry so longwinded,but little help from
the powers that be....
Click to expand...

That was short? Was there more than one sentence there?

Essentially it sounds like to me - if I translated that jumble with no
spacing and hardly a breath between - that you have bad hardware. Get your
stuff off there if you can and get the hardware checked out immediately.
Then, altogether, after all you described(I think - try spacing a bit more
next time) you would be tons better off with a fresh installation anyway.
If you did all I think you did, there are going to be other consequences.
 
Jim Calvin said:
Thanks, Shenan,
My wife thinks so too.
But I am trying to save mostly a few documents and
settings bfore installing my new better hard drive. Can I
do a "parallell install" and salvage anything? So far, am
unable to access anything. You are also right, since have
tried almost everything from the KB.
Click to expand...

You may be able to do a repair installation, take ownership (look up that
wording in Help and Support) of the files and folders and get the files you
need off there.
 
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