Member Avatar for ndstevens

I have a mess on my hands, and I hope someone can help me!!

Machine: ThinkPad T43p; Windows XP Pro SP2 ( but I can't find my OEM software anywhere. :$ ; we do have a CD from XP Pro SP2 for my husband's Dell laptop, however.)

My original problem (the short version): Boot process would not finish. Had gotten as far as figuring out through msconfig that the culprit was probably a non-Microsoft service. In trying to figure out which one, I probably did something really stupid, because now ...

I can't boot up at all.

(I can get to IBM Rescue & Recovery partition, but only real option there is to revert back to factory settings, which means wiping everything off and starting over. Dr. Watson hardware diagnostics all report o.k.)

The black error screen gives me a bunch of choices - Choosing any of the Safe Mode options or Last Good Configuration gets me a blue screen that doesn't stay around long enough for me to read much of what's on there. I have been able to see that it suggests running chkdsk /f, but I have no idea how to get to the C prompt when I'm in a boot-failure loop.

Any ideas out there? I've been dealing with this since Sunday, and it's driving me batty. :angry:

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Dani AI

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Given the symptoms reported by and the suggestion from about recovery media, the priority is to preserve user data before attempting any factory restore. If the ThinkPad will not reach a usable desktop, the fastest safe move is to pull the drive and copy the user folders to another machine (USB enclosure or USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter), or boot from a rescue environment (Linux LiveCD, BartPE/Hiren's) and copy files to an external drive. That preserves documents, email and browser profiles before any destructive repair.

If a non-destructive repair is wanted first, booting to Recovery Console or a matching Windows XP Pro installation disc can fix boot-level problems and corrupted registry hives. Typical Recovery Console steps (from a Windows XP Pro CD) include repairing the master boot record, rewriting the boot sector, rebuilding the boot configuration, and restoring registry hives from the repair folder. Example commands to run from Recovery Console:

fixmbr
fixboot
bootcfg /rebuild

cd \windows\system32\config
ren SYSTEM SYSTEM.bad
copy \windows\repair\SYSTEM \windows\system32\config\SYSTEM
(repeat for SOFTWARE, SAM, SECURITY, DEFAULT)

Do not run those hive restores unless the drive has been backed up first; incorrect use can make things worse.

About media: as noted, getting official IBM recovery media is the cleanest option for drivers and product licensing. A Dell XP disc can sometimes boot and allow a Recovery Console / Repair install, but it may require reactivation and will not include IBM-specific drivers/utilities. If the blue screen disappears too fast to read, pause/photograph the POST/BSOD or enable boot logging from the Advanced Boot Options so the failure code can be captured; that code often guides whether it is a corrupt registry/driver or something deeper.

If hardware diagnostics truly show no fault, focus on data backup first, then Recovery Console repairs or a repair install from correct media. If those fail, a factory restore is the last resort.

Member Avatar for compdoc

contact IBM and see if you can get a copy of windows from them, if you can use it to do a repair install. I'm not sure if the Dell CD will work in this case, but if all is lost and you have to restore to factory, I would try the Dell CD first to see if it would work.

not sure what else you can do at this point.

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