#@!$ Microsoft Windows!

[sluggobear]

Today's lesson to all you Windows users:  When you click Start, Shutdown, just let Windows do its thing.  Don't switch the power-off early... even if it's taking a few minutes to shutdown.

I got a nasty blue screen of death today... after doing some research and speaking with HP, something's hosed on my hard drive... possibly a corrupt BOOT.INI file

Comments

[furrbear]

I'll secind Dan's suggestion of the recovery console - it has an option to rebuild boot.ini, as well as do a chkdsk and repair.

It's usually available from booting from an install CD.

[sluggobear]

I'm told the Recovery Console doesn't work on OEM builds of WinXP... mine was pre-installed with WinXP Media Center by the manufacturer (HP).

HP doesn't include any CD's at all... just the hidden partition with the "Recovery Tool" (which obviously isn't the same as the Windows Recovery Console.)

I'm looking for a WinXP Pro CD, just to see if I can get the Recovery console to work... but I'm pretty sure I tried this awhile back, and it didn't work (purportedly because it was an OEM install of WinXP).

I think I'm just gonna have to backup my data and do a full HP system recovery.

(I imagine Vista Ultimate is still back-ordered for awhile at your company store, Dan? Seems a logical time to upgrade now LOL)

[didiseven]

If you boot XP exclusively from the install CD, I think you should be able to get into the recovery console. The issue you're referring to may be this one:

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1209358,00.html

If your particular hardware needs a mass storage driver that's not loaded by default, you may need this workaround.

[pulsecub]

As someone who bought a new Mac Book Pro in December, I can tell you that Mac's have their issues too. My Mac has locked up totally on me on a few occassions; it took five tries to get the Adobe Creative Suite to install, and every now and again, the optical drive gets real finnicky with DVDs...

I think the carrot here is as our OSes and the demands we put on them become more complex, we're going to have more problems overall with the computers we use.

[zacwolfdotcom]

Definitely do the recovery mode:

Here is a total step by step guide:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Unless it's a laptop, don't turn the thing off period. If you schedule all of your virus scans, patch installs, etc. during the middle of the night then it will chug along and pretty much keep itself clean.

-Zac

[bearinslc]

sorry buddy, you shut it down while it was processing updates, need to do a repair or reinstall

[redgtbear]

tsk tsk tsk Shame! young man!

*giggle*

Something like that happened to me once and not only did I loose all my stuff - I lost all of Fred's stuff. OMG there were lectures for days from him. LOL

Hope the system is up and running soon!