Help needed to resurrect a Win XP Professional.

.... well, this is going to be a long writing but I'll do my best to make it a reading as short as possible for you folks.

The problem : My PC no longer boot (since last night) and I have no idea about what is going on.
After turning power on the screen shows quickly the messages
"Invalid file boot.ini" and "Booting from C:\Windows\".
I then can see the Win XP logo and the progress bar. After a while the screen turns totally black and after a few seconds it turns to the blue screen of death with the following:

STOP: C0000135 {N
it was not possible to locate component}
This application could not be started because KERNEL32.dll was not found. A
re-instalation of the application may fix the problem

(please note the original text may be a little different as my XP is a Portuguese version and a made a translation of the messages. Anyway, I reckon it makes for an exact picture of the problem)

From this point the only action that works is turning power off.


The Scenario :

My PC has four HDs, with 3 of them being bootable. The 1st one is for normal daily usage and is the most used. The 2nd one is only for video / photo editing and DVD authoring. The 3rd one is a Ghost drive copy from an old drive and is meaningless (I think) for the situation.
All HDs are SATA, HD1 is FAT32 and the others are NTFS.
The option from which HD to boot is given by the mobo ASUS P4C800E-De Luxe.


The Recent Events :

I joined shutterfly yesterday and was uploading my photos one by one when I realized it could do be done more efficiently by using a plugin available from their website. At this point I also realized some photos would need to be edited for corrections.

I stopped uploading the photos and downloaded/installed the plugin from www.shutterfly.com to upload files in a bulk. After that I re-started the computer, using the 2nd drive to edit some photos, and had the job done. It was time for a break and having dinner with my family. The computer was left turned on and unattended.

Forty five minutes later I returned to the desk just to see the computer re-booting by itself. On the process I noticed CHKDSK running and checking ALL drives (I have around 10 logical drives) AND MAKING CHANGES ON THE FILE SYSTEM. Two files that had been touched was AUTOEXEC.BAT and BOOT.INI as the messages I could see on the screen. A lot of others actions had been taken by CHKDSK to "fix" whatever it "thought" could be a problem. All this actions had been carried out over the disk containing the no longer booting XP.

There was no power failure, no one touched the machine, and it's quite bizarre for myself why the PC had re-booted while unattended and, probably, idling. The XP running at the time was the one I use for video/photo editing and had been quite stable lately.


That is it, folks. I hope I made it as clear as possible for you and that the provided information is enough for someone out there to shed some light on the matter. Any help that could bring back to life the dead XP will be most welcome and greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Luciano

So are any of the drives bootable or do you get the same error on all three?

Here is some info on that error:

http://groups.google.com/groups?sour...35&sa=N&tab=wg

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...OP%3a+C0000135

You can boot your XP CD into the Recovery Console:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314058

From here the three boot repair options are:

FIXBOOT

FIXMBR

BOOTCFG

Originally Posted by jephree

So are any of the drives bootable or do you get the same error on all three?

Here is some info on that error:

http://groups.google.com/groups?sour...35&sa=N&tab=wg

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...OP%3a+C0000135

You can boot your XP CD into the Recovery Console:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314058

From here the three boot repair options are:

FIXBOOT

FIXMBR

BOOTCFG

Thanks Jephree.
The other bootable drives are just fine. Going thru any of them the machine starts as always. Actualy, I can access all files on the drive holding the dead XP without any trouble if I start the PC from the other 2 bootable disks. It's just the Windows that doesn't start.

I forgot to mention that I have created a BOOT.INI file on the root drive (after starting from other disk) but this just eliminated the first message that says there is no boot.ini file. The blue screen still show up.

I'll try the Recovery Console to see how it goes. Just a question : should I go thru all the 3 options FIXBOOT, FIXMBR and BOOTCFG ?

Once again, thanks.

Luciano

I would suggest first trying FIXBOOT alone.

If that doesn't help try FIXBOOT > Enter > FIXMBR consecutively from the same command prompt.

If that doesn't help try FIXBOOT > Enter > FIXMBR > Enter > BOOTCFG from the same command prompt.

Please refer to this link for more detailed option flags and command descriptions:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314058

After a long fight to recover the Administrator's account password (since the beginning this account has been disabled - due security reasons) I finally got access to the Recovery Console.

The FIXBOOT made no good, still the blue screen.

The FIXMBR shows a huge warning that it may affect my partition table and that all my data may become unaccesible. It really scared me and I decided to first make a drive copy with Norton Ghost and then give FIXMBR a try.

By the way, I do have a GHOST drive copy (stored in another disk) of the disk with the "dead XP" that is from 6 weeks ago. Do you know if this copy can be of any good in recovering the original disk?

Thanks,

Luciano

I have never used Ghost but I assume that it would restore the disk to the point from which it was taken (6 weeks ago).

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...OST+drive+copy

Well, that's the problem, I can't afford to loose the last 6 weeks. My idea was to use the copy just to get some system files that would make the dead drive bootable again, but still keeping the data as at 2 days ago. I just don't know how to do this.

I'll make a current copy and then will try the BOOTCFG. After that I'll post here the results.

Thanks.

If you can: "access all files on the drive holding the dead XP without any trouble"

Why not just move these files to one of your working drives?

Well, you're right, Actually, accessing the data from other XP installation is the workaround I'm using over ther last days.

But access to the data files are not the sole problem. There is also the application software installed over the last years, with its updates, settings, preferences, etc. As said earlier, each XP installation has different purposes, thus the installed software are different.

BTW, I've tried BOOTCFG and still no success. I'm now looking for a spare disk with enough space to hold a backup before trying FIXMBR.

It's just that would be very nice whether someone out there could be able to explain how to access, on the GHOST copied drive, the necessary data and files to make the dead XP to be re-born / bootable again.

Thanks.

I found this Ghost site that appears to have a lot of info:

http://ghost.radified.com/

The index at the bottom of the page lists:

[Page 7] - Bootable Ghost CD/DVDs.

Do not know if this is what would help you or not. Just thought I'd pass it on.