I have been having cooling problems with my computer which I found was attributed to too much thermal paste. After spending the day tweaking my cooling, I turned the system back on and loaded the bios to check temps. Great, system idles at 45 with all fans on max, and at 52 with all fans on low. I restart the system and let it go into XP. It fails and I get a BSOD with an Unmountable_boot_sector error. I pop this into google on a friends computer and get a microsoft webpage that explains this as a built in error, and to run chkdsk /r. I do this but now the system runs, right up until that black and white screen right before windows loads. It shows a status indicator at the bottom. The system locks on this screen and then shows a message that a file is missing and reports it as windowss/system32/config/system. I am guessing that running chkdsk screwed something up. Is there a way to fix this or am I screwed and have to reinstall windows?
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XP Toast after chkdsk??
- Thread starter tunaman
- Start date
Direwolf20
2[H]4U
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- Mar 10, 2004
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You can TRY replacing that file (Get it from your friends computer if he has the same version of windows).
Can you get into Safe Mode? If not, use Bart PE and try to replace the correct files, etc.
Good luck!
Can you get into Safe Mode? If not, use Bart PE and try to replace the correct files, etc.
Good luck!
Hey, I just had this same problem yesterday. The problem is a file Windows needs to boot is on a bad sector of your hard drive. Use your XP CD to boot into the Recovery Console and then run a CHKDSK /R . This will do a full surface scan on your hard drive and attempt to relocate data that's in bad sectors. Depending on what state your HDD is in, this should allow you to boot into Windows.
If you do get back in, backup all your important data and buy a new hard drive! Bad sectors are a sure sign of a failing HDD. I'm using this as an excuse to buy a WD Raptor!
Good luck.
Edit: By the way, running check disk did not mess-up your system. Your drive is failing, that is what caused the problem.
If you do get back in, backup all your important data and buy a new hard drive! Bad sectors are a sure sign of a failing HDD. I'm using this as an excuse to buy a WD Raptor!
Good luck.
Edit: By the way, running check disk did not mess-up your system. Your drive is failing, that is what caused the problem.
Ok, well I was planning on replacing the hard drive anyway because its now the loudest item in my system. But is there anyway to restore the operating system so that I can load into windows? You say to run chkdsk /r but that is what I did immediately before my system got hosed.
You need to run it again. It will try and move the data off the bad sectors. If it's successful in moving the data, Windows should boot. If that doesn't work, download the utilites supplied by your hard drive manufacturer. They usually supply tools that will scan the disk and try to relocate bad sectors. And if that doesn't work, your drive may be too far gone. You can always set it up as a secondary hard drive and try to copy your data off it once you have a new drive setup as your OS if you have anything important on it.