At 21:28 15/06/2009, you wrote: >Roger Munford wrote: > > I have a PC (6 months old) which dual boots windows XP with Ubuntu which > > is used by the family. My son switched off the power before Windows shut > > down and it doesn't boot anymore. Ubuntu is unaffected and so I don't > > believe that any hardware has failed. > > > > My main gripe is with the so called "recovery console" which should have > > been the path to recovery. However it refused to start. This is > > apparently due to the absence of SATA drivers which can helpfully be > > fixed by putting them on to a floppy disk - if I had a disk drive. > > > > Thanks to Ubuntu, I have all the data and I was happy to re-install XP > > but when I tried that, setup just hung "looking for previous windows > > versions". To verify that these problems were linked to the Sata > > drivers, I tried an old IDE disk with a win2k partition which was found > > both by recovery console and setup within a few seconds. It makes me > > angry that a company with the resources of Microsoft do not have better > > tools and I am convinced that this is deliberate. > > > > During the struggle I came across ntsfix which unfortunately wasn't a > > substitute for chkdsk but it reset XP's log which triggered chkdsk > > when XP was rebooted. Unfortunately the screen went blank at the end so > > I don't know the results. > > > > Can anybody advise on what to do next? I installed XP on the blank SATA > > disk when it was new without a problem and do not understand why setup > > cannot do it again or at least give a sensible reason. I would prefer to > > leave Ubuntu undisturbed and if possible the existing windows data. I am > > not even confident that re formatting the whole drive would allow me to > > reinstall. > > > > Thanks > > > > > > Roger > > > > > > > > >You can reinstall XP without the SATA drivers by going into your BIOS >settings and looking for something labelled SATA Native Mode or AHCI >mode. If you have the former, set it to disabled for the install, if you >have the latter set it to IDE (they're the same things just different >names). This setting makes your SATA drive behave like an PATA drive for >the install. Once you've reinstalled the AHCI drivers for your >motherboard you can change the setting back.
Yes its called something like NativeIDE on my gigabyte MB. I left it as IDE since syllable OS and w2k doesnt support AHCI with my gigabyte motherboard. There is also a roll your own windows install cd that can be made with your motherboard drivers. I havent done it myself though so i dont have a link. Tell us how you get on Martin N Owner of the bwfc yahoogroup and Co-Moderator of MiniDisc and amithlonopen yahoo groups. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
