Windows XP Crash Questions

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Xarzu

Geek Trainee
I am trying to recover from a crash.

Here is my story. I have just moved. I have two computers. One computer has an XP operating system. By means of one of those monitor, mouse and keyboars switcher, I used the same monitor and mouse and keyboard for each computer. In my new place where I just moved to, I decided to have the two computers seperate and so I went out and bought a new keyboard and mouse for the XP.

After I set everything up, I noticed a problem. When I booted up the computer, I saw it did some error checking or scanning of the hard drive. It showed that I now have 4 bad sectors on the hard drive. Then the boot up proces stopped.

So now I have lots of questions.


  • Am I correct in assuming that I can revive my computer by re-installing the Windows XP OS and the installation program will be able to do an evaluation of the hard drive and modifiy the OS accordingly?
  • For some reason I cannot access my BIOS when I reboot. Is this because I am using a new keyboard and the new keyboard has a USB connection instead of the old style connection that the original keyboard had?

I had a look at
Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users

My computer came with three CD's None of the three are called the "Windows XP installation disc". Instead I have one called the "System recovery" disc. This must be the one that I can use. I will see if I can make use of this.

In the mean time, I have some more information and questions.

I switched to my original keyboard and I found that I could press f8 at start up and get into safe mode. Then I was able to launch safe mode at a dos prompt. But then when I typed "chkdsk r" it said it could not put a lock on the hard drive because another process was running.

I might have difficulty booting the computer so that it recognizes the CD drive as the boot drive. I might need to go into the BIOS and make some adjustments to make this happen. How do I do this? I thought I could get there by pressing F8. What is the magic key I need to press during start up to go into the BIOS setting setup?
 
Can you tell us about the computer that has a bad hard drive ? where you using this computer before ? Usually bad sectors mean the hard drive should be replaced..You could try and reinstall xp on it to see what happens..
 
Ghostman 1 said:
Can you tell us about the computer that has a bad hard drive ? where you using this computer before ? Usually bad sectors mean the hard drive should be replaced..You could try and reinstall xp on it to see what happens..
Click to expand...

It is a sony vio. What do you want to know about the computer?

I am able to boot in safe mode, if that will do me any good.

In order to reinstall XP I will have to set the BIOS to boot from the cd drive. How do I do that?
 
If you can get into safe mode, when it is all done loading right click on C: drive and choose properties, next click on tools,click on error checking, then put check mark into both options and then let it scan,It will fix all errors on hard drive if it can..
Booting from bios, once in the bios, look for boot options , choose to boot from cd , FIRST boot, then floppy and then hard drive..
 
Ghostman 1 said:
If you can get into safe mode, when it is all done loading right click on C: drive and choose properties, next click on tools,click on error checking, then put check mark into both options and then let it scan,It will fix all errors on hard drive if it can..
Booting from bios, once in the bios, look for boot options , choose to boot from cd , FIRST boot, then floppy and then hard drive..
Click to expand...

That looks like it should work. I will know if works in a moment and let you know.

In the mean time.... I used to know how to start up the computer to look at the BIOS. To get there, you have to press some keyboard button or combination. I press F8 to get into the menu to select safe mode. But this is not the same key to get to BIOS setting
 
What brand is your computer ? usually to get into the bios at startup it would be Delete key or f1 or f2 key, some also use the f10 key.
 
Here is my update.

It looked promising. I went into save mode and made the selections you suggested to fix the drive. It prompted me with a message saying that it needed to reboot in order to complete the fix.

I have the suspicion now that this must have something to do with the fact that the C drive is almost full. The next chance I get I will try to move some directories to the D drive.

It rebooted but I was not fast enough to click on F8 and it fell into the analysis of the C drive and it said it was done but it stayed on that screen. Maybe I should have waited a few more hours just to be sure.

I restared the compute and this time I hit F8 to go into Safe Mode. This time the computer ran a bunch of commands on a DOS like command screen in just white and black and hung.

I will work with this some more in a couple of days. I think trying to get things going in safe mode will be better than using the system restore disc.
 
Here is where I stand now.

I tried F2, I tried F1, and I tried the ESC key but I could not get it to bring up BIOS when I was starting up the computer.

As for safe mode, I can no longer bring up the Graphic User Interface Safe mode but I am able to bring up the command line interface.

I have the "System Recovery Disk".

So either I:
  1. Find a way to repair the C drive from the comman prompt.
  2. Find a way to go to the drive where the system repair disk is via the command prompt and do something. The problem is, I am not what to do.
  3. Find a way to go to the the BIOS prompt. F8 takes me to a menu to run the OS in various safe modes, but F2 or F1 is not the way to get to the BIOS. I kind of rember it was some combinatioin of two prompts.

Please advise.

Update:

By just deleting all of the skype files and all of the tmp files I have been able to free up a gig of hard drive space.
All this was done from just a command window.
I was able to to find the textpad link and run it as if I was using the GUI OS version.
This along with some clever "dir" outputing to a file I was able to create a bat file and I am now running a bat file I wrote to delete everything in the "google" directory (google desktop and google chrome).
Now I have a new idea. If I can find and run the textpad from a command window, maybe I can run the Windows XP defrag program and fix my hard drive. Would the defrag program do that? Any idea what the program is called for XP?
 
YOU never told me the make and model of your computer ? And it sounds like things are getting worst instead of better, What size is your hard dive ? You just might want to do a total reinstall of xp, with either the recovery option or with an XP setup disk ...
 
Ghostman 1 said:
YOU never told me the make and model of your computer ? And it sounds like things are getting worst instead of better, What size is your hard dive ? You just might want to do a total reinstall of xp, with either the recovery option or with an XP setup disk ...
Click to expand...

It is a Sony Vio from 2001. I cannot tell you specifics about the CPU and other things until I have a look at the BIOS. And right now, the machine is tied up.

Things got worse when it was trying to recover the hard drive when I was in normal Safe Mode, I think, because it did not have enough free space on the hard drive to do its operation.

So maybe after freeing some space, things will get better.

I was able to get into command line mode and free some space which I have learned is about 22% of my hard drive. I freed almost 4 gigs.

I found a dos based defrag program and I am running it now. Could it be that this might fix my problem all together? Isn't this what defrags do?
 
Clearly, F2 is what I am supposed to hit when the computer is first starting up in order to get into BIOS mode.

While I was defraging my C drive in safe mode the defrag software (Diskeeper from Executive Software {never trust a Scientology front organization} which is another story} seemed to have touched on the bad sectors on the hard drive and the OS rebooted saying:

Award Medallion BIOS V6.0
COPYRIGHT (c) 1984-2001, Award Software, Inc.

ACPI Blps Revision 1003LV

Intel (R) Celeron (TM) 1200 MHz
Memory Test: 261120K 0Kt 1024K Shared Memory

Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A
Initialize Plug and Play Cards

Detecting Primary Master...... MAXTOR 4K060H3
Detecting Primary Slave........ ST312 0814A
Detecting Secondary Master.. Pioneer DVD-RDM ATAPI Model DVD-117 0104
Detecting Secondary Slave... HL-DT-ST GCE - 81608

Hardware Monitor found an error. Enter Power setup menu for details

Press F1 to continue. F2 to enter Setup
Click to expand...

Here is where things went to a new level. When I pressed F2 nothing happened. But if I press F1, I go down the same joy ride I have been going through.

This lead me to think that, on top of all my problems, I must also have a defective keyboard. While to other keys on my keyboard seem to work, there seems to be a problem with the F2 key. So I went to the electronic store and bought a new keyboard.

I learned that the new USB keyboards they sell today do not work with the older computers that have a PS2 port. They do not even work with an adapter. The keyboard I had been using had worked with an adapter. The new USB keybards will not work even with an adapter. My OS did not recognize any keys I typed with the keyboard I just bought today.

Is all hopeless now and I just have to throw away my old computer?
 
I plugged in the keyboard to a USB port, and I hit F2 during start up and the BIOS window came up.
 
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