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Reinstalling windows
I recently had an issue with my XPS 400 with windows media center edition not booting. I contacted dell about it and they told me to try a system restore, which led to a blue screen error. So they told me that they would have to send me the reinstall cd for the operating system. Once I got it, I tried to run the reinstall, but every time my computer restarts during the process, it goes back and tries to attempt the system restore again bringing the blue screen back. If I try to use the setup or startup menu to make it boot from the cd, it restarts the reinstall process from the beginning, so I can not get past the first restart.
Thanks in advance for any help.
tolstoy143
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Posted January 9th, 2008 21:00
Exactly, that is why I am advising that you fix the disk before you reinstall Windows. Your current PE is obviously borked, so it would seem that doing the following, in this exact order, is the only immediate solution (that I can think of) to reinstall Windows correctly without deleting the recovery partition on D:
Recovery Console: chkdsk /f /r
Recovery Console: fixboot and fixmbr (just for good measure)
Windows Setup: Format C, NTFS Quick
and see if it gets any further. You don't have anything to lose by trying again.
If there are no other partitions you care about then I would just repartition and reformat.
Btw, are these IDE disks? If so, did you do anything to change the master, slave, or CS settings?- The chkdsk /f /r said the parameters were invalid, but by using the help fuction I was able to see that chkdsk /p /r was valid, but it froze during the process.Also, when I enter the recovery menu, there are 5 choices to choose from: 1: I:\Windows, 2: I:\WIndows2, 3: C:\minint, 4: D:\Windows, 5: N:\minint. Which do I choose? WHen I tried it, I assumed it was the first one.Also, I did not change any of the master, slave, or CS settings.
tolstoy143
209 Posts
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Posted January 9th, 2008 22:00
aha, do you have a USB drive or thumb-drive connected? If so, disconnect it and try again.
Basically what I think I am seeing is that you have two install sessions (as evidenced by two minints) which can only (normally) happen if you have two disks. And one of them has a Windows2 which I think might be your original install moved out of the way so it doesn't get clobbered.
In any case, it won't matter really which you choose, we just need access to the basic recovery utilities that will operate on the entire partition or disk.- There is no USB drive connected, but the machine has 2 Hard drives, I guess one is supposed to serve as a backup storage for some norton ghost program that was never setup properly.Anyway, whatever one I choose, when I enter chkdsk /f /r it says the parameter is not valid. However I tried chkdsk /p /r, and that froze a couple of times, but worked once.
- I ran chkdsk /p /r and it seems to have frozen on me. Ill let it sit a little longer in case it just takes a long time, but it seems stuck at 50% completed. How do I go about starting from scratch. At this point, it would be nice to save the data, but anything that would allow me to just reinstall windows and get the computer up and running would make me much happier, this thing has been annoying me for too long.
Message Edited by west2005 on 01-09-2008 07:49 PM - I have tried re-doing the install, that is what I have been trying to accomplish this whole time, but during install the system restarts itself after copying the files, upon restart, if I touch nothing, it tries to go to the Symantec Dell Recovery Environment, if I make it boot from the CD (which it should anyway since I have it set to boot from the CD then the HD), it just starts the reinstall process from the begining (meaning, it goes back and does the drive check, formats, and copys the files, only to need to be restarted which makes starts the whole cycle over again).Thanks again for your help.
tolstoy143
209 Posts
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Posted January 9th, 2008 23:00
btw, you were right, you did want the /p partition and omit /r... I have been knee-deep in Linux lately and have been confusing my CLAs... I'm getting old.
But, if you either (temporarily) disconnect the slave or change the drives from CS to manual master/slave then that should be moot.
What you have now is most definitely 'borked' though, even if the minint does boot right you probably be best off to start from scratch and reinstall windows again.
tolstoy143
209 Posts
257
0
Posted January 9th, 2008 21:00
Go into your BIOS and make sure your CD is listed before your HDD as a boot device.
Boot into the CD and select R for recovery console.
Use these commands:
chkdsk /f /r
fixmbr
fixboot
Cross your fingers, and if that doesn't help try and run the hardware diagnostics for the hard drive.