Bootcfg /rebuild could not find any Windows installations on my PC. Yet here I

[retrobug]

I do believe that I exacerbated my own "slow system" problem when I defragged, then defragged again and then shredded the free space with nCleaner. Oh and then I ran Belarc Advisor and messed around in a few of the settings. Why? My clean system was running almighty slow. I had upgraded my RAM and that was no help and I changed my CMOS battery as well. Physically cleaned it with canned air. Nada.

Clicking on desktop items, slow response. Slow response to load personal settings. Well now it is all that and worse. Now it is also super slow to shut down. It takes over 2 minutes for start up or shut down.

I was not able to start the system in safe mode for troubleshooting, so I used my CD and ran R without F2.

I ran E:>\attrib -h -r -s E:\\boot.ini and it didn't find a boot.ini.
I ran E:\Windows>attrib -h -r -s E:\\Windows\boot.ini and it didn't find a boot.ini.

I know it has a damn boot.ini. And no my boot drive is not C.

I successfully copied by boot.bak to both E:> and E:\\Windows.

I read them in bootcfg /list. But when I ran bootcfg/ rebuild, it said it could not find any Windows installation on my system.

I ran chkdsk, and it said it fixed a couple of things. I also ran fixboot. And then fully expecting NOTHING when I exited and tried to start up. But haha. Here I am. Running on NO operating system lol.

I am wondering if I should do system restore or what? I build this computer myself, it is not any "brand" and it was running really well until I got paranoid about the slowness and security settings.

What do you think? I am really worried about the bootcfg not being able to find any Windows. I am thinking about ghosting the drive and then doing System Restore. Feels like I'm working on borrowed time with the HDD maybe.

 

[ksiemb]

I do believe that I exacerbated my own "slow system" problem when I defragged, then defragged again and then shredded the free space with nCleaner. Oh and then I ran Belarc Advisor and messed around in a few of the settings. Why? My clean system was running almighty slow. I had upgraded my RAM and that was no help and I changed my CMOS battery as well. Physically cleaned it with canned air. Nada.

Clicking on desktop items, slow response. Slow response to load personal settings. Well now it is all that and worse. Now it is also super slow to shut down. It takes over 2 minutes for start up or shut down.

I was not able to start the system in safe mode for troubleshooting, so I used my CD and ran R without F2.

I ran E:>\attrib -h -r -s E:\\boot.ini and it didn't find a boot.ini.
I ran E:\Windows>attrib -h -r -s E:\\Windows\boot.ini and it didn't find a boot.ini.

I know it has a damn boot.ini. And no my boot drive is not C.

I successfully copied by boot.bak to both E:> and E:\\Windows.

I read them in bootcfg /list. But when I ran bootcfg/ rebuild, it said it could not find any Windows installation on my system.

I ran chkdsk, and it said it fixed a couple of things. I also ran fixboot. And then fully expecting NOTHING when I exited and tried to start up. But haha. Here I am. Running on NO operating system lol.

I am wondering if I should do system restore or what? I build this computer myself, it is not any "brand" and it was running really well until I got paranoid about the slowness and security settings.

What do you think? I am really worried about the bootcfg not being able to find any Windows. I am thinking about ghosting the drive and then doing System Restore. Feels like I'm working on borrowed time with the HDD maybe.

What do these options of bootcfg come up with ? Bootcfg /scan - bootcfg /rebuild (sorry, you already did the /rebuild) !

 

[retrobug]

What do these options of bootcfg come up with ? Bootcfg /scan - bootcfg /rebuild (sorry, you already did the /rebuild) !

Yeah I am sorry I did it too because now I lost my system restore points. BAAAAH.

But I am wondering if I can restore just the registry if I can find my multitudinous registry backups. (So far no luck on that.)

Thanks to me being a dummy and following Belarc advisor, I seem to have locked myself out of Admin privileges. It gave me a red flag for letting the Administrator be named Administrator, so I changed it. But then I saw something about mapping the accounts... oops... so I changed it back. TOO LATE. Damage was done. (Yes I do that a lot lol.) But it is so hard to find ALL of the pertinent facts relating to a procedure in one place! So anyway a lot of the hidden system files which were not previously hidden to me ARE HIDDEN NOW...

Anyway, this is what boot.ini says:

[boot loader]
timeout=60
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="K:\Windows" /fastdetect /noexecute=optout
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /fastdetect /noexecute=optout
D:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Recovery Console" /CMDCONS

Yes, I know the first two are duplicates with different names.

msconfig says D:\ CMDCONS...etc...is an invalid path, but I have not deleted it.

Actually the boot up has improved but the hang up on shut down is unbearable. In fact, I got something to eat, took the dogs out, went to bed... and eventually I guess it did shut down.... (Yeah, it's that slow.) Which is why I had to replace the CMOS battery. I wore the battery out using hibernate a lot instead of waiting for it shut down.

But I am worried about it not finding any OS install when I went through that.

 

[retrobug]

The hard drive has a sector error. Chkdsk didn't fix it and neither did the DOS version of Seatools. I have two new hard drives on order. I was able to regain admin access to the original windows install by recreating SAM from the repair folder again. It's clearly corrupted but I think I can recover what I need from it to make my stuff work.

 

[tigsounds]

Go HERE and see if anything advised helps.

 

[retrobug]

Clean boot helped improve the slow shut down up until I got the 0x50 error and couldn't log into that instance of Windows anymore. Although I can log into it via safe mode when/if the BIOS doesn't lock the keyboard out. That seems to happen randomly, too.

 

[retrobug]

It's cool if you are going to help to read and understand the problem. Although....Actually I did a LOT of stuff before and after I posted this request for help, that I didn't annotate here. (Since nobody was replying and I really didn't get any help when I needed it. I had to move forward as best as I could.) Thanks anyway. I think I found another tigsounds post yesterday that might be helpful going forward with partitioning my new drives. I'm thankful for that.

 

[tigsounds]

It's cool if you are going to help to read and understand the problem.

>Taking one problem at a time, so I sent you to instructions on disabling the pagefile wipe at shutdown as a starter.

Clicking on desktop items, slow response. Slow response to load personal settings. Well now it is all that and worse. Now it is also super slow to shut down. It takes over 2 minutes for start up or shut down.

>I question the operating age of the XP build now in the machine. Is it new? Your startup/shutdown symptoms are similar to a system that has not had the chipset drivers installed.

Although....Actually I did a LOT of stuff before and after I posted this request for help, that I didn't annotate here. (Since nobody was replying and I really didn't get any help when I needed it.

>Sometimes it takes a little time. It's that darn patience is a virtue thing again.

I had to move forward as best as I could.) Thanks anyway.

>Gotta do what you gotta do.

I think I found another tigsounds post yesterday that might be helpful going forward with partitioning my new drives. I'm thankful for that.

>And it might still be viable. I Hope it works for you.

 

[retrobug]

New... heh. What does that mean exactly in terms of technology? It was new when I built it three years ago. I guess it is not so new anymore. It was probably "old" 6 months after I built it. Although except for the Western Digital IDE drive, the hardware seems to be working ok. Patience may be a virtue, but under the circumstances, a luxury I cannot afford. I'm still waiting for the genie to come out of the lamp I found on the beach in 1992, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[tigsounds]

I ask about a new install because once in awhile someone comes here with slow machine problems because they never installed the chipset drivers.

 

[retrobug]

The original install has the chipset drivers. The parallel install does not. The parallel install is working fine. The original install is giving me fits. My new SATA drive is here, so I'll be working on partitioning that. Gonna try to configure it for a dual boot Windows and Ubuntu and all the complexities that entails. And then recover the rest of what I need from the failing IDE drive.

 

[tigsounds]

Make life a bit easier... If you downloaded the "Hitachi" file I have at 4Shared.com, it can be run by booting the CD you made from the downloaded image file, or using that same new CD, it can be installed in Windows and ran from there (a bit easier from Windows). Choose custom partitions when offered.

 

[retrobug]

Yes, THAT is one of the posts of yours I found doing pre research before my SATA got here. I downloaded it yesterday or two days ago. Just about to burn that now. I really want to NOT mess this up.