How do I create a XP bootup disk on floppy?

gizmoleeds

masonic wrote:

You won't be able to access NTFS formatted drives that way. Well, unless you just talking about booting a winxp cd from a non-bootable cd-rom drive.

Ah. My mistake - I never used to use NTFS so I haven't realised that.

Mr_Skint_2

I forgot what about http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/download.html

masonic

Mr_Skint wrote:

I forgot what about http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/download.html

Now that's something I think I could find a use for!

viney

Ok, I have got a bit lost again I am afraid.

Yes my friend does have a disk. As the PC was a HP one, they did not give a seperate disk as there was a recovery partion on it. I am not sure he can access that or how to get to it.
However, when the pc was first bought, it asked if we wanted to create some recovery disks, which I think is the same as what was on the partion.

If it is I assume that is what you are refering to as the installation cd?

If so, can I just insert that in to the pc and let it boot up using the CD as the default?

Thanks all for helping with this.

masonic

viney wrote:

However, when the pc was first bought, it asked if we wanted to create some recovery disks, which I think is the same as what was on the partion.

If it is I assume that is what you are refering to as the installation cd?

No, the windows xp installation cd I mean is the one from microsoft, that can be bought in the shops. It sounds like neither of you have one.

Without a win xp cd, you can't use the recovery console to copy the files in step 5 of the article John posted (part one), but you might be able to use a boot disk to do this (you now have a few to choose from). If you make a simple boot disk and use it to start up your friends computer, then copy the stated files in part one of that tech net article, you should be able to get their computer to boot into safe mode. Then, you can follow the rest of the article to try and get the computer back into a working state, ultimately using system restore.

viney

ok summary so far

I failed very badly.

Boot up disk started up ok, but did not get me anywhere, when it scanned it kept stopping, maybe there is corruption on the disk. But it would not do anything.

last good config did not work

system restore worked so I tried the updates and then I got a pop up message saying there was a critical problem. As it looked a bit dodgy i ignored it but it must have been genuine. All I got at the restart was one problem after another. Have tried to format three times and keep getting something like "sorry there has been a problem... try last good confic.... safe mode.." none work.

Mr_Skint_2

Windows/System32/Config/System file,, This message can also mean that
there is going to be an imminent hard drive failure, rare but it can happen.

masonic

Well, if you managed to get somewhere and now you're back to square one, it definitely sounds like the problem is bigger than a couple of corrupt files. I can't think of anything else you could try to repair the system... your friend might want to consider breaking out those recovery cds that he made. Of course that would mean losing any important files stored on that partition, so whether he wants to do this would depend on how important that data is and whether it has been backed up. If it's the hard drive as Mr Skint suggests, this won't work either, in which case your friend will need to get on to hp for a replacement (if it's still under warranty).

viney

You know when things are very rare and they are unlikely to happen, well I think they have and I belive it is a hard disk failure.

Luckily it is under b/card free warranty and they have told me to ring a company called comart, which I will try tomm.

The recovery disks went through the motions but when it tries to format the drive it gives some error saying it cant do it and to restart and retry. When I do the same happens again and again. The boot up disk had the same problem it could not scan the hard drive.

Any idea what causes a hard drive failure and how did you know it would follow, out of interest?