Sorry this question is so detailed - want to give expert as much info as I can.
Out of the blue yesterday my main computer, a 2000 vintage Dell Dimension XPS T600 P3 became sluggish. Working like a dream up to then after installing new hard drive three months ago following disk failure. Fully MS updated OS, Norton AntiVirus Professional 2003, Lavasoft Ad-AWARE SE Pro. The machine has two hard drives - second one partitioned X 2. My program files were on the main un-partitioned drive, assigned drive letter "D" (not "C") All my programs were loaded onto this drive and worked perfectly.
This computer started off with MS Win 98SE OS back in 2000. I updated it with a Win XP Pro Upgrade in 2001 the day after the OS was launched. I kept it upgraded ever since, with few problems. My knowledge of computers is reasonable good - self taught but by no means an expert. I understand most issues.
Decided to reboot because of sluggishness. Cannot start computer properly since.
Got message:
invalid "boot.ini" file
booting from C:\windows (This puzzled me - should have been D:\windows).
NOTE: Though I had my second drive partitioned (Norton PM8) as letters "C" & "G" there was no program, especially start up files or indeed other files on this partitioned "C" drive.
Tried to do a "repair install with my Win XP Pro Original CD. Got as far as accepting the terms & conditions by pressing F8 but, there was no budge on pressing F8. Keyboard just seemed dead to activation by F8. Esc key worked though to exit from this method. In any event I don't think this method would have worked as the CD contained the original version of Win XP Pro. (No SP1 or SP2). I did have backup floppy diskettes (6) but, they are all thrashed - left too close to a hot radiator.
Before things got as bad as they are now I also tried a restore, to no avail. Had to actually seek out the .exe file separately to launch restore. (i.e. Got an "open with" option on trying to launch). Started up okay on browsing to the .exe application file. As did Norton Partition Magic 8, which I used later to rename the drive letters from "D" to "C" and the old "C" to "H". Maybe this was not such a good move after all. I thought that if I renamed the "D" drive letter to "C" drive the boot up would proceed. Yughs!!! I think I may been a little hasty and impatient and not let the changes fully complete!
It would be great if I could create a bootable CD-ROM! I have scoured the net & MS Tech Support to no avail. Cannot create floppies as my only working machine is a laptop which does not have a floppy drive.
Win XP Pro SP2 will not boot up as far now as it did on first encountering the problems. Originally I was able to access Explorer and the Control Panel.
Now it just goes into a loop at Start-up. After logging in with password, machine seems to begin to boot, shows dialogue stating "Loading Your Personal Settings" dialogue box then almost instantly changes to "Logging Off" and, after a minute or two dialogue state Saving Settings". It will then go straight to the login screen again and on entering password repeats the whole process. I feel that a remedy should not be too far away in view of getting that far- obviously a corrupted/missing boot.ini and other start-up files.
From the Command Prompt I have also tried to repair/rebuild the boot.ini and start-up sequencing with "BOOTCFG". A BOOTCFG /SCAN gives "Error - failed to successfully scan discs for windows installations. This error may be caused by corrupt file system, which could prevent BOOTCFG from successfully scanning. A run with CHKDSK found no disc errors. A BOOTCFG /SCAN must complete successfully in order for the /ADD or /REBUILD commands to be utilised.
Sun, 19 Feb 2006 11 51 37
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