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Solution found !!!
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at 12:54 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Zsombor Zsuffa (1 messages posted)


I had the same problem and I found the solution, a very simple one. The partition I expected to boot was not active. To set it active you can use FDISK, and you have a menu there Set active partition. Good luck, Zsombor


On Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 10:09 pm, david brick wrote:
>I think that basically your MBR (master boot record) is screwed up. I had a tri
>boot PC ( XP Pro, 2000 Server, SuSE Linux) and after deleting Win 2k Server partition
>on the laptop to save space by using Partition Magic this error appeared. Not wanting
>to lose all the information on the laptop on the XP partition...
>
>I did the following...
>
>1)I tried to reinstall XP with the product CD by putting it in the CD drive restarting
>the computer and waiting for it to load up with different options. I think Install
>is the choice you want to select even though you are just reinstallilng... you don't
>want the recovery console option (yet).. You want to install XP with the option of
>leaving the existing file system in place (in other words you don't delete the entire
>Windows partition but probably just overwrite the existing Win files with new ones.
> This will rewrite your Windows files (by default I believe that they are in C:/Windows
>unless you did an upgrade from 2000 where I think that they installed under C:/WINNT
>by default). Take the CD out as it should have copied the files needed to install
>and restart. When I restarted the laptop it still didn't begin installing the operating
>system. If it doesn't then you need step 2 shown next...
>
>(2) Put the product CD back in the tray and restart and this time pick the Recovery
>Console option. Recovery Console is the closest that you get to the old DOS diskette
>for utilities. If you do a HELP /? then you see the commands. FDISK is now DISKPART
> and FDISK /MBR is now FIXMBR. It will ask you which Windows partition you want
>to do the recovery console on. So you should see a list of installed Windows installations
>(you will probably pick the first one since by default Windows will install to the
>C: drive first. You may be asked for an the password for the Adminstrator user account.
>Next select the partition and you enter the recovery console. Type DISKPART at the
>command line and you may see something like I did which had an unsed partition first
>of about 8MB then another small partition listed perhaps using the FAT, FAT32 or
>NTFS file system, then your large Windows installation partition. Now you know your
>partition layout! Next type FIXBOOT at the command line and then type FIXMBR. Restart
>the computer with the product CD removed and hopefully it should begin installing.
> I deleted all partitions after my WinXP partition while in the DISKPART area but
>this shouldn't be necessary as the main reason why the error originally occurred
>is because the MBR was whacked which shows among other things I believe where on
>the hard disk to start to look for the boot program so that you can begin the loader.
> If you use Linux then you may need to reinstall GRUB or Lilo loader since reinstalling
>Windows this way will overwrite the MBR for the Linux load.
>
>*** Note that before doing step 1 you may want to just try step 2. This is because
>if you have installed a service pack and updates... then I believe that you will
>need to install them again after reinstalling but I just wanted a fresh install of
>Win XP so I did step 1 as well.


Written in response to:
re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (david brick: Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 10:09 pm)

There are presently no replies to this message.

All messages in this thread [show all]
-Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (tj: Tue, Jun 18, 2002, 9:14 pm)
*re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (AA: Wed, Jun 19, 2002, 12:46 am)
-re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (Bob B: Wed, Jun 19, 2002, 4:51 am)
-re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (Tiffany: Wed, Feb 18, 2004, 3:45 am)
-re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (david brick: Sun, May 16, 2004, 10:09 pm)
*re: Question about 'Top reasons for random, fatal crashes in Windows XP and Windows 2000' (david brick: Sun, May 16, 2004, 11:29 pm)
*Solution found !!! (Zsombor Zsuffa: Wed, Jul 13, 2005, 12:54 am)
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