Howdy Guys,
Now this one has me stumped, I’m fixing a Compaq Presario Laptop for a friend. It started off with an error while booting where the it was missing/corrupt “c:\windows\system32\config\system” anyway following instructions on the net I went through the process of making temps of the 5 files (system, software, sam, security, default) from the \config folder, and then copied the relevant files across from \repair. Now when I go to boot the system boots and gives me the welcome screen, and because the person only has one account (with no pass) it auto logs into that account.
As such I am greeted with the Compaq Background (orange squares) and then an XP box “Personalising Settings” in the top left6 corner, which after a while will go away, however the screen will remain at the compaq background (no icons load up even after hours of leaving it sitting there). The mouse cursor moves and if I press ctrl+alt+del a task manager appears however whenever I try to click in it, it is unresponsive and gives me the hourglass (loading mouse) icon.
So I try and boot into safe mode, have tried both the default ‘Admin’ account and the ‘Owner’ account but both give the following results. Once logged in I am greeted with the system restore option message and either way I choose at the moment gives me the same thing: the desktop icons load up (well most icons do) however while the mouse moves the system is otherwise unresponsive (can’t highlight/select/open) and a similar thing happens with taskmanager to non-safe mode if I try it.
So next I try inserting an XP install cd to do an overwrite repair (not recovery console) but once I pass the agreement screen and get to the partition screen there is no option to repair, only to create/delete partitions and to install over any of the partitions. I have tried replacing the system/software/sam…etc files twice more as well as replacing ntdrl and deleting and recreating the boot.ini however I am unsure how to proceed at this point.
Thanks in advance guys!
Cheers
Sandman
