Windows XP Tips & Tricks

Repairing Windows XP on command line.

Most of us have seen it at one time or another; perhaps on our own PC, unable to load the OS and getting some errors as mentioned below.

Windows NT could not start because the below file is missing or corrupt:

X:\\WINNT\\System32\\Ntoskrnl.exe
_________________

Windows NT could not start because the below file is missing or corrupt:

X:\\WINNT\\System32\\HAL.dll
_________________

NTLDR is Missing
Press any key to restart
_________________

Invalid boot.ini
Press any key to restart

We have come up with a process and its very simple: Get to the Windows Recovery Console for your particular Windows installation, navigate to the root letter of your installation (C:in most cases), issue eight commands, and reboot. The cornerstone of this process is a command called “BOOTCFG /Rebuild” which is a complete diagnostic of the operating system loaded into the recovery console; the purpose of the command is to remove/replace/repair any system files that were preventing the operating system from loading correctly. Amongst the files it fixes are:

Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

Corrupt registry hives (\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\CONFIG\\xxxxxx)

Invalid BOOT.INI files

A corrupt NTOSKRNL.EXE

A missing NT Loader (NTLDR)

GETTING TO THE WINDOWS RECOVERY CONSOLE

Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD and assure that your CD-ROM drive is capable of booting the CD. Configuring your computer to boot from CD is outside of the scope of this document, but if you are having trouble.

Once you have booted from CD,” You’re going to proceed until you see the following screen, at which point you will press the “R” key to enter the recovery console:

1.       You will be prompted to below mentioned command line interface.

PROCEEDING WITH THE REPAIR FUNCTIONS

·         There are eight commands you must enter in sequence to repair any of the issues I noted in the opening of this guide. These commands are as follows:

·         C:\ATTRIB -H C:\\boot.ini

·         C:\ATTRIB -S C:\\boot.ini

·         C:\ATTRIB -R C:\\boot.ini

·         C:\del boot.ini

·         C:\BOOTCFG /Rebuild

·         C:\CHKDSK /R /F

·         C:\FIXBOOT

Now that we are at C:\ we can begin the process of repairing the operating system
and that begins with modifying the attributes of the BOOT.INI file. Briefly, BOOT.INI controls what operating systems the Windows boot process can see, how to load them, and where they’re located on your disk. We’re going to make sure the file is no longer hidden from our prying eyes, remove the flag that sets it as an undeletable system file, and remove the flag that sets it as a file we can only read, but not write to. To do this, we will issue three commands in this step:

·         C:\ATTRIB -H C:\BOOT.INI

·         C:\ATTRIB -R C:\BOOT.INI

·         C:\ATTRIB -S C:\BOOT.INI

To remove the Hidden, System and Read Only flags.

Now that we’ve modified the attributes for the BOOT.INI file, it’s up for deletion. The syntax for it is simple: { DEL | FILE NAME }, e.g., C:\DEL BOOT.INI deletes the BOOT.INI file.

Now for the most important step of our process, the BOOTCFG /REBUILD command which searches for pre-existing installations of Windows XP and rebuilds sundry essential components of the Windows operating system, recompiles the BOOT.INI file and corrects a litany of common Windows errors. It is very important that you do one or both of the following two things: First, every Windows XP owner must use /FASTDETECT as an OS Load Option when the rebuild process is finalizing. Secondly, if you are the owner of a CPU featuring Intel’s XD or AMD’s NX buffer overflow protection, you must also use /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN as an OS Load Option. I will demonstrate both commands for the purpose of this guide, but do not set NOEXECUTE as a load option if you do not own one of these CPUs. For the “Enter Load Identifier” portion of this command, you should enter the name of the operating system you have installed. If, for example, you are using Windows XP Professional, you could type “Microsoft Windows XP Professional” for the identifier.

This step verifies the integrity of the hard drive containing the Windows XP installation. While this step is not anessential function in our process, it’s still good to be sure that the drive is physically capable of running windows, in that it contains no bad sectors or other corruptions that might be the culprit. Just type CHKDSK /R /F at the C:> prompt. Let it proceed; it could take in excess of 30 minutes on slower computers, when this is finished move on to the seventh and final step.

This last step also requires no screenshot. When you are at the C:> prompt,
simply type FIXBOOT. This writes a new boot sector to the hard drive and cleans up all the loose ends we created by rebuilding the BOOT.INI file and the system files. When the Windows Recovery Console asks you if you are “Sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ?” just hit “Y,” then enter to confirm your decision.