Major BSOD Problem

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I guess I finally blew it — I now get the BSOD whenever trying to boot to my XP partition. I get the usual multiple boot window where I select XP or W7, but after selecting XP I immediately get the BSOD in either regular or safe mode. So I suppose something in the XP boot sector got clobbered. Any suggestions on how to bail me out of this problem? I suppose I could reinstall XP from the original CD, but that’s going to be a killer as there will be hundreds of updates to install, etc.
I tried running chkdsk on C: from my W7 partition on E:, but I’m denied access. I was hoping there was some way to fix XP from the W7 partition, but I seem to be blocked at every point. If I could access my files on C: it would be easy to copy them to my W7 partition, but access is restricted.

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You can do a,Repair XP here’s a link that will show you how;Repair XP GOOD Luck

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You could also try a “Fixmbr” command on it from a boot disk.

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If I could access my files on C: it would be easy to copy them to my W7 partition, but access is restricted.

There are a number of Linux versions that you can run from a CD (without going as far as a full instal) and they should give you the ability to copy files and folders from your C drive.
Knoppix is one, DSL (Damn Small Linux) another.

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Greetings friend… a couple of things to try.

See my post here http://bro.ws/774552L for a suggestion on how to run chkdsk on the affected drive. You will need a USB to SATA/IDE cable (that usually runs about 20 bucks) to attach it to a known working PC. I would recommend running chkdsk on the affected drive with the /r option. I would also run defrag on the drive while attached to the cable, and probably a malware scan with MBAM or SAS. FYI, I have seen chkdsk run for DAYS on a severely damaged file system, so be patient, and by all means, once chkdsk is executed, allow it to complete. (That means you probably don’t want to do this from a laptop without the power supply.)

If that fails to render the drive bootable, you may try this. Warning: do this at your own risk. However if done carefully and correctly it is reversible. I have had this succeed and fail, so no guarantees. This process will replace the registry files from the System Restore area to the system32/config directory. THIS IS NOT A NEWBIE PROCESS – IF YOU ARE THE LEAST BIT UNCOMFORTABLE DOING THIS, DON’T. You will also need to have had System Restore enabled on the affected drive.

– With the drive connected to the USB to SATA cable, rename the following files in /windows/system32/config on the affected drive:
rename DEFAULT to DEFAULT.BAD
rename SAM to SAM.BAD
rename SECURITY to SECURITY.BAD
rename SOFTWARE to SOFTWARE.BAD
rename SYSTEM to SYSTEM.BAD

Now right click the System Volume Information directory on the affected drive and give yourself read access. Browse to a recent restore point prior to when the problem occurred. Open the Snapshot folder and select the five REGISTRY_MACHINE_hive files, then copy them to the /windows/system32/config folder. Rename the copied REGISTRY_MACHINE_hive files to DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, and SYSTEM respectively (with no extensions).

Now detach from the USB to SATA/IDE cable and reinstall in the original system. Hopefullt you’ll get the XP (or whatever) splash screen. Like I said before, this process is reversible by deleting the hive files you pulled from System Restore and removing the .BAD extensions from the original hive files.

Best regards,
Mike

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Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I forgot to mention that XP runs on the C drive but Vista and W7 run on separate partitions on a second hard drive. Thus, the problem probably lies with a faulty C drive. I’ve tried running various anti-virus programs such as Malwarebytes, etc., from W7 with no success. The boot sector on the C drive must be faulty. I can access the C drive from W7, but I run into a permissions problem when attempting to copy files. I will try to override that and move my files.

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I guess I finally blew it — I now get the BSOD whenever trying to boot to my XP partition. I get the usual multiple boot window where I select XP or W7, but after selecting XP I immediately get the BSOD in either regular or safe mode.

I think we are jumping the gun a little here so I ask you to please provide more information on the BSOD you receive. It may narrow down the search to a solution whether it be hardware or software related.

Please refer to this article for further information if reviewing the crash logs looks a bit daunting then please let us know so we can assist.

How to read the small memory dump files that Windows creates for debugging

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

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