Go easy on me – a relative newbie here!
Rather stupidly, I obeyed an instruction from an obsolete piece of Virus scanning software to delete a particular file that appears to be vital for the functioning of my laptop. It’s an Amilo M 7400 Centrino 1.4 combo running Windows XP Home Edition.
When it boots up, I get to the splash screen, but then come to a screen telling me that the computer did not shut down properly, and asking me if I want to do a “safe start”, “safe start with networking”, or a “normal start”. Hitting any of these options brings me (eventually) back to this screen. I have a kind of Linux boot disk, which starts the computer but thereafter, I’m clueless, so I assume that there are no physical problems with the computer, and that what I have actually done is to delete something vital for XP to start up.
I am wondering if what I need is a boot disk, that would allow me to either repair this installation, and how I would go about getting one. I have also searched high and low for the recovery disk and cannot locate it. Could I source either of these from the people who sold me the laptop a couple of years ago ? The recovery disk is of course the nuclear option, but may be my only choice.
The conscensus of most people I know’s suggestions appeared to be to get hold of a XP disk and launch a repair from that. This I have managed to get hold of – an XP Pro disk (although my home computer has XP Home on it). I put it in the CD drive and restarted it. I’m fairly sure the BIOS is set to boot up off the CD drive first – that’s what the boot menu seems to suggest. Sadly, when the computer starts, it doesn’t appear to want to boot off the disk I was provided with. I just get the same options as if there were no disk there. However, if I insert a Linux disk, it boots from it straight away, so I suspect it’s not a hardware fault with the CD drive. I am very much a beginner in all of this, and probably proof positive that ?a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?! The problem also seems to be that I can’t get the PC to boot off any disc except Linux. How do I get to the recovery console on the Pro (or indeed any) disk ? It won’t presently launch as the computer only gets so far (to the safe reboot screen) before asking which one I wish to use (Safe, Safe with Networking, Normal Restart) – selecting any of these just brings me back (eventually) to this screen after crashing.
I can’t remember which file I deleted as it was deleted by a antispyware application. It looks like it was some kind of driver, as this is where it crashes. There’s no recovery partition on the laptop and I have mislaid the recovery CD. I was kind of hoping to avoid using the recovery CD until I had exhausted all other possibilities as it would wipe out all the software and documents.
If I F8 and ask it to run in debug mode, it appears to hang when it is loading up the drivers. My worry is that I will buy a XP Home CD/DVD, and the computer will not boot off that – ?50 ($100) down the drain.
Any help at all would be gratefully received
