wildcat74,

To enter Recovery Console (which is where you need to be to correct the problem) see the procedure here. You must boot with the XP Reinstallation disk, see this.

Once you are in Recovery Console at the command prompt enter the following (substituting the letter of your CD-ROM drive for X:

expand x:\i386\pci.sy_ c:\Windows\system32\drivers and click .

Thanks.  I will try this tomorrow. I am having trouble with the CD Rom drive.  Hopefully, I can't get it to work tomorrow.  I will let you know!

Denny:

I was able to boot with a different CD Rpm drive.  I followed your instruction and got the following response:  Unable to create file pci.sys.

In addition, if I issue a DIR command, it says "An error occurred during directory enumeration"

Is there another way to recover pci.sys?  Thanks!

wildcat74

 

 

 

wildcat74,

Run diagnostics on your hard drive. It sounds as though it is failing.

Hello

I am having the same problems too.

When I type in the expand command it just says "Access is Denied"

Not sure how to gain access.

Thanks in advance

I just got assistance from DELL and my system is back up and running.  Boot from your original set-up disk and press "r" for repair when you get to the first screen (I think there are 3 choices at this screen.  Then choose 1 for the installation to repair.  When you get to the C: windows prompt, type "chkdsk".  This goes through and repairs files.  It worked for me.  When this is done..about 1 hour, try and reboot from the hard drive.

If this does not work, she gave me one more option.  Let me know.

 

wildcat74

I have the same error on a dimension 8400 after doing a select startup in msconfig, and removing Microsoft office 2003. Computer will not boot and get the error you did. I tried want Dell told you and did the chkdsk /p option. Is that what you did?

Jim

So far the test is at 1% complete for about 10 minutes. Maybe it is hung. I also booted to the utility partition, previously, and ran the express test. It was getting message errors on the SATA Drive. It said it was an unrecoverable error or it was write protected. There were many errrors, so I canceled the test. Does anyone know if that is a non-destructive test?. I assumed it was. Maybe the drive is shot.

The problem was that the computer was very very slow, and would hardly do anything when the mouse was clicked on things. Installed the free Grisoft AVG virus protection software as the McAfee was expired. The scan did not find a virus.

It sounds like your problem may be different than mine.  I don't recall whether I had a /p after the chkdsk or not.  I did it as I spoke with her and did not write it down.  She gave me one more possible thing to try if the chkdsk did not work.  I have my notes at home and I will post them to you tonight when I get home.

Denny,

Thanks for the info on expand pci.sy_. I got further along but chkdsk /p said there were disk errors. Now I get the blue screen posted in a earlier message to wildcat74. Should/Can I do the expand command with a wild card like:

expand d:\i386\*.sy_ c:\windows\system32\drivers

to do all the files in the drivers directory? Would windows just use the ones it needs? It seems I get the blue screen as it is executing drivers files.

Also if I use reinstall Windows xp, which is item #1 on the recovery console, will it leave my apps and network settings as they were before?

I used the expand command mentioned by Denny and it fixed two bad files: pci.sys and isapnp.sys. Now when I start booting, after I see Windows xp I get the blue screen with

***STOP: 0x0000007b (0x7997524,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000) witch seems to be a

disk not available error.

The chkdsk /p took 8 hours to run on this 80Gig SATA drive. It said it found errors on the drive and suggested I run chkdsk /f. It would not run and said do /p or /r. I just hit enter for the administration password so I do not know if that is why. Can I use the option 1 which is a Windows XP install without losing my programs and the setup for my broadband cable Modem. Does anyone know the answer? Denny?

Jim