Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

XP re-installation Problems

1 view
Skip to first unread message

Sasha

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 11:34:23 AM4/9/12
to

My laptop (Amilo Pro) with Win XP and SP3 worked perfectly until last
week. Thereafter it told me that there is no operating system
installed.
Booted with my (legal) Product Recovery CD. Which started with the
usual 'Setup is loading files', 'Setup is starting Windows' and then
displayed the usual menu: 'To set up Windows, press Enter' - to repair
… etc. This menu displays on the screen for about 3 seconds and then
the laptop powers down.
I then booted up with MS DOS 7.1 from a memory stick to check if it is
a hardware problem (overheating?) but the laptop happily displayed the
DOS prompts for hours without powering down.
Finally I used the recovery disk in my desktop and had no problem with
it.
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Sasha

Keith Nuttle

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 11:50:24 AM4/9/12
to
Have you checked the disk for errors. It sounds like something basic
got corrupted. It has been many years but I believe the DOS function is
Fdisk or something like that.

Nil

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 12:12:10 PM4/9/12
to
On 09 Apr 2012, Keith Nuttle <Keith_...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in
alt.windows-xp:

> On 4/9/2012 11:34 AM, Sasha wrote:
>>
>> My laptop (Amilo Pro) with Win XP and SP3 worked perfectly until
>> last week. Thereafter it told me that there is no operating
>> system installed.
>> Booted with my (legal) Product Recovery CD. Which started with
>> the usual 'Setup is loading files', 'Setup is starting Windows'
>> and then displayed the usual menu: 'To set up Windows, press
>> Enter' - to repair … etc. This menu displays on the screen for
>> about 3 seconds and then the laptop powers down.
>> I then booted up with MS DOS 7.1 from a memory stick to check if
>> it is a hardware problem (overheating?) but the laptop happily
>> displayed the DOS prompts for hours without powering down.
>> Finally I used the recovery disk in my desktop and had no problem
>> with it.
>> Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
>>
> Have you checked the disk for errors. It sounds like something
> basic got corrupted. It has been many years but I believe the DOS
> function is Fdisk or something like that.

I hope this is an honest mistake, and not a malicious attempt to wreck
your computer.

The purpose of FDISK is to partition hard disks. It can permanently
delete the content of your disk. It is NOT intended to check your disk
for errors. If you don't know what you are doing... don't play with
FDISK.

The DOS command for checking the integrity of the disk's file system
and surface is CHKDSK.

Auric__

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 12:19:37 PM4/9/12
to
DOS 6 (or maybe 5, not going to check) butchered chkdsk and moved most of its
functionality to scandisk.

There are hardware test suites that run from bootable CDs or what have you;
Sasha may want to spend some time on Google and/or Wikipedia. A good start is
memtest86+:
http://www.memtest.org/

--
Of course, YOU are innocent and are NEVER responsible.

John Williamson

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 2:40:08 PM4/9/12
to
It's possible your CD drive is on the way out. If your laptop can boot
from a USB CD drive, try it in that. You could try running scandisk.exe
from the DOS on the USB stick, but IIRC, the DOS version of scandisk
doesn't understand NTFS, while the Linux utilities do.

Alternatively, if it was telling you there's no OS on the hard drive
before you tried to re-install, the HD may have died, and the easy way
to check this is to boot from a Linux Live CD or The Ultimate Boot CD,
and use the Linux utilities to check the HD.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

There's a version of UBCD which will fit on a USB stick, or you could
just download the ISO file and burn it onto a CD-R.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Keith Nuttle

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 5:00:15 PM4/9/12
to
It was a mistake, "It has been many years but I BELIEVE the DOS function
is Fdisk OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT"

Char Jackson

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 9:16:10 PM4/9/12
to
On Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:40:08 +0100, John Williamson
<johnwil...@oysterbroadcast.co.uk> wrote:

>It's possible your CD drive is on the way out. If your laptop can boot
>from a USB CD drive, try it in that. You could try running scandisk.exe
>from the DOS on the USB stick, but IIRC, the DOS version of scandisk
>doesn't understand NTFS, while the Linux utilities do.

Scandisk is obsolete. Use chkdsk instead. It understands NTFS just
fine.

Auric__

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 11:36:37 PM4/9/12
to
The DOS version? Are you suuuuuuuuuuuuure about that?

--
Twenty minutes and several diagrams later...

Char Jackson

unread,
Apr 9, 2012, 11:43:42 PM4/9/12
to
Sorry, I assumed y'all were talking about XP.

0 new messages