XP Pro Repair Wont Boot URGENT

[martianX10]

Alright, I REALLY need some help now, this has gotten serious. . .I think.

I was having some problems with DirectX before, and someone on here told me to try the windows Repair installation. I finally found it, and did it. It took a while, went through the process, asked if i wanted to install sound drivers, reigonal settings, the mix.

Gets done, restarts the computer, and now it wont boot. It starts, chooses to boot from HDD-0 (my only hard drive), and then RIGHT before the Windows XP professional Splash screen would normally show up, it just restarts. Repeat. It now asks if I would like to boot in safe mode, which just restarts as well. Please help, I have a lot of valuable information on that computer, and my next resort is to just buy a second hard drive, and install windows on that one instead.

 

[brady]

You can definetly install either this HDD as a slave on another machine to grab the lost info off of.

However I would try the LKG ( Last Known Good ).

Question :
When you did the OS repair, did you just stick the disk in and select repair ? Or did you go to Install Windows XP, and select repair from the Installation Part ?

 

[martianX10]

Well when you just hit repair, it took me to Recovery console, but that was a few days ago. TODAY when I did it and it got messed up, I did the seond one, from the Setup / Installation menu.

Also, Last Known did the same excact thing, so theres no easy way I can recover this without using another HDD? Cause I know how to do that, I was just hoping I wouldn't have to go back up 120gb of files . Thanks anyway.

 

[brady]

From what it sounds like your best bet would be:
Booting that HDD up as a slave and transfering files.

 

[martianX10]

Hmm, That means I gotta wait till one of my friends is around to let me use their HDD, shit.

Well, what if I tried running the repair installation again? Would that endanger my files though? Agh this is so lame.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

No your file system is intact...windows is hosed. Buy another hd. Never...ever............ever.............ever..............run a single drive system!!!!! It made sense when hard drives were way expensive (back in the stone ages) but they are so affordable now it make no sense going through what you are going through. Get your new system all set up and transfer all your files to you new drive from the corrupted one. Get a copy of Norton Ghost, reformat the corrupted drive and make a perfect bootable copy of your new drive with the saved information and then if the new dirve fubares swtich the drives and do a repeat perfomance without ever having to re-install windows!!!!!

 

[brady]

"Well, what if I tried running the repair installation again? Would that endanger my files though? Agh this is so lame."

I wouldn't recommend it, just b/c I don't want to be the one that told you to do something that will endanger your files.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

Won't do any good anyway to run repair again....the master mind is correct. rerunning windows repair leaves your current files intact but it will not help you restore windows at this point!! You need to recover your files......my suggestion, I my humble opinion, is the chreapest and simplest way to go for you.

 

[martianX10]

Well I don't know how long it will be before I can get another harddrive, im shit broke at the moment.

What If I just reinstalled windows WITHOUT formatting. What would that do? I wouldnt lose my files correct? But would it help the boot problem? Gah this is so terrible.

 

[brady]

You technically should be able to re-install windows without losing your data... just remember if you do end up losing your stuff, that we advised against it.