Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands

Most of us have seen it at one time or another; perhaps on our own PC, t= he PC of a loved one, or perhaps a PC at your place of employment. The system spends weeks or months operating in a smooth fashion, taking you to the far reaches of the wide, wibbly web, and after one particularly late evening of browsing and gaming, you shut your PC off and = go to bed. Millions of people across the globe do just this every night, but a= few of us have turned our PCs on the next day not to the standard Windows XP loading screen, but instead this dreaded error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup
using the original Setup CD-ROM.
Select 'R' at the first screen to start repair. <= /o:p>

Which renders your PC inaccessible from the standard= boot procedures of Windows XP. You try safe mode, to no avail. You’= re particularly savvy and try issuing the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands in the Windows recovery console, but after each reboot, you’= re merely greeted with the same obnoxious and terrifying blue screen of death that’s preventing you from accessing your precious data.
Perhaps you’ve also seen these error screens:

Windows NT could not start because the below file is missing or corrupt:

X:\WINNT\System32\Ntoskrnl.exe
_________________

Windows NT could not start because the below file is missing or corrupt:

X:\WINNT\System32\HAL.dll
_________________

NTLDR is Missing
Press any key to restart
_________________

Invalid boot.ini
Press any key to restart

Allow me to build tension by prefacing the end-all/be-all solution with = my background: Having worked for the now-incorporated Geek Squad branch of Best Buy Corporation for the better part of eight months, I have seen dozens upo= n dozens of systems come through our department with any one of these errors, brough= t in by customers who are afraid they did something, have a virus, or are in jeopardy of losing their data. Prior to my discovery of an invaluable seque= nce of commands, our standard procedure was to hook the afflicted drive to an external enclosure, back up a customer’s data and then restore the PC with the customer’s restore discs or an identical copy of Windows with the customer’s OEM license key. If the customer wasn’t keen on = the applicable charges for the data backup, we informed them of the potential r= isks for a Windows repair installation (Let’s face it, they don’t al= ways work right), had them sign a waiver, and we did our best.

Neither of these procedures are cheap in the = realm of commercial PC repair, nor do they inspire a tremendous level of confiden= ce in the technician or the hopeful client.

In an effort to expedite our repair time and retain the sanity = of myself and other technicians, I received permission to undertake a case stu= dy on a variety of PCs currently in service that exhibited any of the aforementioned symptoms, and I took it upon myself to find a better solutio= n. After crawling through the MSKB, Experts Exchange, MSDN and sundry websites= all extolling the virtues of a solution to these problems, I only found one that worked, and it has been reliably serving me for the better part of two week= s on seventeen PCs to date.

The process is simple: Get to the Windows Recovery Console for your particular Windows installation, navigate to the root letter of your installation (C: in most cases), issue eight commands, and reboot. The cornerstone of this process is a command called “= BOOTCFG /Rebuild” which is a complete diagnostic of the operating sy= stem loaded into the recovery console; the purpose of the command is to remove/replace/repair any system files that were preventing the operating system from loading correctly. Amongst the files it fixes are:

Windows Hardware Abstract= ion Layer (HAL)

Corrupt registry hives (\= WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\xxxxxx)

Invalid BOOT.INI files

A corrupt NTOSKRNL.EXE

A missing NT Loader (NTLD= R)

The command process may apply to other types of blue screens or Hive/HAL/INI/EXE/DLL-related stop errors, but I have not had the luxury of computers in this type of disrepair. The process I am about to outline is virtually harmless, and if you feel you may be able to correct your PC’s boot-time blue screens and stop errors wit= h the sequence, feel free to try.

Let us now begin with a step-by-step instruction for correcting these issues.

Getting to the Windows Recovery Console

Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD and assure that your CD-ROM drive is capable of booting t= he CD. Configuring your computer to boot from CD is outside of the scope = of this document, but if you are having trouble, consult Google for assistance.
Once you have booted from= CD, do not select the option that states: “Press F2= to initiate the Automated System Recovery (ASR) tool.” You’re going to proceed until you see the following screen, at which point you will press the “R” key to enter the recov= ery console:

After you have selected t= he appropriate option from step two, you will be prompted to select a val= id Windows installation (Typically number “1”). Select the installation number, (As mentioned, “1”= in most cases), and hit enter. If there is an administrator password f= or the administrator account, enter it and hit enter. You will be greeted with this screen, which indicates a recovery console at the ready:

Proceeding With the Repair Functions

There are eight commands = you must enter in sequence to repair any of the issues I noted in the open= ing of this guide. I will introduce them here, and then show the results graphically in the next six steps. These commands are as follows:

C: CD ..

C: ATTRIB –H C:\boot.ini

C:ATTRIB –S C:\boot.ini

C:ATRIB –R C:\boot.ini

C: del boot.ini

C: BOOTCFG /Rebuil= d

C: CHKDSK /R /F

C: FIXBOOT

To “Go up a directory” in computing is to revert back to the directory above= the current folder you’re operating in. If, for example, I’m in the C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32 directory, and I want= to get at a file in the WINDOWS directory, I would merely type CD ..<= /strong> and I would be taken out of the SYSTEM32 fo= lder and up one level to WINDOWS. We’re going to do the same thing he= re from the WINDOWS folder to get to the basic root of C:

Now that we are at C: we can begin the process of repairing the operating system

and that begins with modifying the attributes= of the BOOT.INI file. Briefly, BOOT.INI controls what operating systems the Windows boot process can see, how to load them, and where they’re loc= ated on your disk. We’re going to make sure the file is no longer hidden f= rom our prying eyes, remove the flag that sets it as an undeletable system file, and remove the flag that sets it as a file we can only read, but not write = to. To do this, we will issue three commands in this step:

C:ATTRIB –H C:\BOOT.INI

C:ATTRIB –R C:\BOOT.INI

C:ATTRIB –S C:\BOOT.INI

to remove the Hidden, System and Read Only fl= ags.

Now that we’ve modi= fied the attributes for the BOOT.INI file, it’s up for deletion.

the syntax for it is simple: { DEL | FILE NAME }, e.g., C:DEL BOOT.INI deletes the BOOT.INI file.

Now for the most important step of our process, the BOOTCFG /REBUILD =

command which searches for pre-existing installations of Windows XP and rebuilds sundry essential components of the Windows operating system, recompiles the BOOT.INI file and corrects a litan= y of common Windows errors. It is very important that you do one or both= of the following two things: First, every Windows XP owner must use <= strong>/FASTDETECT as an OS Load Option when the rebuild process is finalizing. Secondly, if y= ou are the owner of a CPU featuring Intel’s XD or AMD’s NX buffer overflow protection, you must also use /NOEXECUT= E=3DOPTIN as an OS Load Option. I will demonstrate both commands for the pur= pose of this guide, but do not set NOEXECUTE as a load option if you do = not own one of these CPUs. For the “Enter Load Identifie= r” portion of this command, you should enter the name of the operating system = you have installed. If, for example, you are using Windows XP Home, you could t= ype “Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition” for the identifier. This gi= ves the process some authenticity, if you’re keen on being a perfectionis= t.

This step verifies the integrity of the hard drive containing the Windows XP

installation. While this step is not an e= ssential function in our process, it’s still good to be sure that the dri= ve is physically capable of running windows, in that it contains no bad sector= s or other corruptions that might be the culprit. No screenshot necessary here! = Just type CHKDSK /R /F at the C:> prompt. Let it proceed; it could take in excess of 30 minutes on slower computers, when this is finished move on to the seventh and final step.

This last step also requ= ires no screenshot. When you are at the C:> prompt,

simply type FIXBOOT. This wr= ites a new boot sector to the hard drive and cleans up all the loose ends we creat= ed by rebuilding the BOOT.INI file and the system files. When the Windows Reco= very Console asks you if you are “Sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ?<= /span>” just hit “Y,” then enter to confirm your decis= ion.

Results and Wrap-Up

It’s time to reboot your PC by typing EXIT in the Windows Recovery Console and confirming the command with a stroke of the en= ter key. With any luck, your PC will boot successfully into Windows XP as if your various DLL, Hive, EXE and NTLDR errors never exi= sted. You’ve just saved yourself from many hours of work, frustration, potential data loss and shelling out your hard-earned greenbacks at a brick’n’mortar operation.

Keep in mind that this solution is only designed to resolve the issues introduced in the preface if the cause is unrelated to spyware and viruses; while I have had significant luck with rebuilding heavily-infe= cted systems in the method I have described, it is not guaranteed. If you believe your PC has affected one of these symptoms due to spyw= are or viruses, today’s fastest-growing PC nuisance, please do stop by ou= r Spyware/Virus/Trojan Forum to receive first-class assistance in quarantine, removal and repair. Be sure to read the guidelin= es of our SVT Forum before posting!

Good luck and happy hunting,
Robert “Thrax” Hallock