Google for BartPE, and Ultimate Boot CD for Windows - you'll find good stuff there.
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 6:22 AM, Mike Moratz-Coppins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thank you for all of your responses. I had decided to go with a new > installation of WinXP unless anyone had any further ideas, which I have > already gone ahead with (customer data backed up already). The clean > install has worked without incident. > > There were one or two suggestions about taking the disk out and > virus-scanning it. I did do this already, there were a few extra > infected executables such as lsass.exe (and the files were cleaned not > removed), but the installation still didn't work properly. > > A few people suggested system restore - the only way (AFAIK) that this > could be done with things as they were would have been if I had > substituted logonui.exe for the system restore exe, which considering > the limited success I had with registry editor and the command prompt, I > don't think this would have worked (I think the customer/Symantec had > also tried to use system restore without success before the current > situation got as bad as it did). Also, do people here think that system > restore could have handled a situation where the whole CurrentControlSet > key structure was unavailable? > > I tried one last thing before going with a clean install, which was a > repair install, however that tripped up on the problem that I couldn't > start the computer in normal mode, it just went straight into safe mode. > Does anyone know why WinXP might automatically go into safe mode even > if normal mode is chosen? I would bet that a lack of CurrentControlSet > key might do it, but I would have thought a repair install would disgard > that key structure anyway. > > The other thing I would like to know is where the rights and privileges > settings are stored on an XP installation. I snooped around using the > registry editor in the security hive on the ntpasswd boot CD but I don't > have any experience with that hive. > > There was a suggestion or two along the lines of that it wasn't worth my > time or money and/or that it wasn't in the best interests of the > customer for me to try and troubleshoot the problem any further. > Personally I don't consider myself to be at the pinnacle of knowledge > when it comes to problems like these but I will always as many of my > ideas a shot as possible, as this and/or customers might benefit from > this investigation. I also think that doing a clean install for > customers is an absolute last resort as that itself can bring > complications, such as the loss of the customer's settings, and the > possible finger-pointing that "the computer doesn't run as well as it > used to since you messed with it", justified or not. Of course it is a > case of picking the right time to close the investigation and to correct > the overall problem the quick way, but I am sure that everyone on this > list used to use an OS reinstall as the answer to their problems more > often than they do now. > > > > > -- > > > Mike Moratz-Coppins > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.mikeymike.org.uk/ > >
