xbellex said:
thanks, but i'm no computer whizz kid.. i don't have cd's u mention. i
have a
laptop can i do anything from here to sort out the pc that has the error
on
belle
The short answer is no, if you don't have the CDs, or the means to access
the drive from another system (and this means using a drive adapter to
attach the laptop drive to your system, and also means removing the drive
from the laptop), you can't fix it.
If you don't have the tools, it's going to be difficult to do the job. You
need the right tools, and that means at least a bootable XP CD.
There's one other possibility, though it is slim. On some preload systems,
the Recovery Console is already installed, and you should see this as an
option if you press F8 at startup. If you don't see it, this isn't an
option available to you.
You can *borrow* any other bootable XP CD to perform the tasks in the KB
article mentioned. If your other PC came with such a disk, *not* a system
recovery disk, you should be able to use that. There are no licensing
issues with that approach.
The disk has to allow you to get into the Recovery console. All bootable
XP disks do this, "system recovery" disks usually do not.
If you know somebody else who has XP and the disk, and you can borrow it,
that will work.
Otherwise, you're going to need physical help from someone who has the
tools.
HTH
-pk