XP Startup Issues - The Recovery Console

-
The Windows Recovery Console is a fantastically useful tool if you find yourself with a PC that will not boot Windows.

There are many useful Windows startup tools such as Last Known Good Configuration and the many different flavours of Safe Mode but all of these rely on a bootable Windows system. System Restore is completely useless in this scenario since it relies on one being in Windows to use it.

The kinds of things that could couse an unbootable Windows system could be:
  • Corrupted boot files - e.g. NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM
  • Corrputed Windows system files - NTOSKRNL.EXE, HAL.DLL
The Recovery Console allows you to boot into an environment "underneath" that of your Windows installation (by using the Windows CD or by choosing it at boot time if you pre-installed it) and so you can perform major low level repairs to your Windows installation.

Follow the link below to find out how to use the Recovery Console:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/

Comments

steve said…
Thanks Muhammad. That's a good tip indeed. Only problem is you have to have already done that before a problem appears - i.e. you need to be able to boot into XP in order to set this up. But this is well worth doing. Thanks.
24 November 2010 at 09:08
http://www.arx.com/resources/white-papers/pki-solution-for-electronic-signatures.htm said…
Thanks Muhammad ! This is great link for me. This is what you need to be able to boot into XP in order to set. You did well done job..Well done man !
17 May 2011 at 11:23
Public Key Infrastructure said…
Thanks Muhammad ! This is great link for me. This is what you need to be able to boot into XP in order to set. You did well done job..Well done man !
17 May 2011 at 11:24
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where are SCANPST.EXE and/or SCANOST.EXE?

-
Image
I sometimes have to deal with customer computers whose Outlook PST or OST files have become corrupted.  Very often the fix is to run SCANPST.EXE on the offending PST/OST file.   However, every time I go to do this I forget where the two executable files are.  Here is where they are on a Vista machine running Office 2007: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 I hope this helps.
Read more

APC PowerChute Network Shutdown - Authentication Phrase

-
Image
​Was installing  APC PowerChute Network Shutdown (PCNS) on a customer’s server and couldn’t find a record of the Authentication Passphrase that I set ages back on their Smart UPSes Network Management 2 Card. So I went to reset it on the card and start anew… it took a lot of digging to find it on their particular release of firmware: Go into the UPS tab, then into “shutdown” inside the “Configuration” category: You may then need to change the passphrase being used on other servers. To do this, open up PCNS in your browser and click into the area shown below:
Read more

WSUS Issues

-
Image
Was configuring WSUS on a Server 2016 VM for a customer recently and found the performance to be very sluggish and most of the time the client PCs would time-out and throw an error message when trying to check for updates. After much digging on different forums I came across a fix that worked nicely: Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and click on Application Pools Then Right-Click on your WsusPool instance and choose Advanced Settings Scroll down to Private Memory Limit (KB) and change it from the default of 1843200 to 0 which means unlimited. Then right-click and stop the WsusPool and then start it again. Hope this works for you.
Read more