XP wont boot, unable to use recovery console

jtw1984

Honorable
Dec 30, 2013
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10,510
Hi,

First, thanks for any replies.

I'm having an issue with my parent's business computer. I received a call from them last night stating an update was installed to XP. They then told me the computer froze up, and they did a hard restart to it.

After the restart XP won't boot. It get's to the BIOS screen, and afterwards just shows a black screen with a flashing underscore.

Now here is the tricky part: I inserted the XP cd. I tried to repair the installation, but it stated no installation was found. The HDD was completly empty.

2.) I went to the recovery console. I do not get the option to select the windows installation.

So now I'm thinking, is the HDD fried or did they somehow format the entire drive?

3.) So I unplug the HDD from the computer, and insert it into another computer. After starting the computer up I see the drive and explore it. All the files are there (the windows directory, personal files, etc...)

4.) I run some diagnostics on the HDD and the windows 10 computer states there are no errors.

5.) I backup all the files from the harddrive and unplug it again. I plug it back into the prior computer and try another boot.

6.) No luck. I go to the BIOS and it is reading the HDD. However, when I go to recovery console or to repair option it does not see a Windows installation. Although its there!

7.) So I go to recovery console and do a chkdsk and it says the drive has unrecoverable problems. However, the Win 10 chkdsk stated no problems.

8.) So after researching on these forums I find that maybe the recovery console isn't detecting a Windows installation because the boot files are no longer there.

So, if you were able to keep up with that...any ideas? Thanks! :)
 
Solution
D
its possible that the partitions got 'messed up' and the system no longer knows which partition to boot from.
Another thing when I check the HDD using partition master:

I have a FAT16, NTFS, and unallocated area of the HDD.

Is this correct? I'm just trying to figure out why this won't boot. Why it doesn't recognize the windows install even though I verified windows directory is still on there and still has files in place.
 
its possible that the partitions got 'messed up' and the system no longer knows which partition to boot from.
 
Solution