Wndows XP Recovery
My Windows XP installation is broke. After a few seconds of displaying the page with a bar containing the moving dots it reboots in an endless cycle.
I am going to try a restore using the instructions I found at:
http://icrontic.com/article/repair_windows_xp
There is a point in these instructions where it branches depending on whether the processor has Intel’s XD. Since I cannot start Windows XP I do not have a way for Windows XP to tell me if my processor has this. All I have is the Recovery Console. Is there a way I can determine if my processor has Intel's XD bit using only Recovery Console, or any of the Linux Live OS disks?
I have a RAID disk pair that mirror each other. These show up as two different disks in the Recovery Console. Should the above repair procedure be done on both of them?
The DISKPART command shows that, although these two disks have always been in a RAID configuration, one of them has more free space than the other. C: has 103236MB free and D: has 109119 MB free. Is this a sign that the disk mirroring is out of sync? If so what should be done about it?
I am going to try a restore using the instructions I found at:
http://icrontic.com/article/repair_windows_xp
There is a point in these instructions where it branches depending on whether the processor has Intel’s XD. Since I cannot start Windows XP I do not have a way for Windows XP to tell me if my processor has this. All I have is the Recovery Console. Is there a way I can determine if my processor has Intel's XD bit using only Recovery Console, or any of the Linux Live OS disks?
I have a RAID disk pair that mirror each other. These show up as two different disks in the Recovery Console. Should the above repair procedure be done on both of them?
The DISKPART command shows that, although these two disks have always been in a RAID configuration, one of them has more free space than the other. C: has 103236MB free and D: has 109119 MB free. Is this a sign that the disk mirroring is out of sync? If so what should be done about it?
0
Comments
I have iso images of both C and D drives on a CLON USB Drive as backups. They were created with CloneZilla.
The images of both drives have been backed up. I am tempted to use the iso file created for the C drive to overwrite the D drive.
For future reference I would recomend using an external backup disk instead of doing RAID1. It is so much safer and foolproof.
SATA Port - 0
SATA Port - 1
The changes were not confirmed so CMOS was not changed when I shut down.
I also did not see in the BIOS how to select between RAID0 and RAID1. Is it possible this is done by mother board switches or jumpers?
Physical SATA 0(if they are labelled SATA 0 and SATA 1) of two ports is master, so basically you have a need to consult manual or fine printed stuff by SATA ports on Mobo physically and see which drive is plugged into it. That drive will defaut to the SATA equivalent of master.
One way to make sure you get that drive as master in the RAID configuration is to let it be only drive plugged in(and have it plugged into LOWEST numbered port for SATA on mobo) when reinstalling windows (yes, looks like you will be reinstalling windows, sorry, so back up any data you need first as the reinstall will wipe the drive probably).
I still need a way to determine if my processor has the NX bit. It is a Pentium 4, and I acquired it at about the time the NX bit was added to them. Please suggest ways I can do this. I am hoping there is a way Debian could do it if I booted it off a Debian Live disk.
Run from a terminal and it will dump all procinfo into the screen using spacebar to advance to the next "page". There should be a section which will have that information. If you cannot figure it out, post the output into pastebin or a .txt file and host it on mediafire with
cat /proc/cpuinfo >> ~/Desktop/procinfo.txt
Only half of the hard drives are formatted. I had always intended to install Debian in the other currently unformated partition to make it a dual boot machine. I never got around to it. It appears I will have to do that now.
I need to know which architecture to download Debian for. I have a Pentium 4. I thought this would be a 686 machine. But CloneZilla, with which I backed up the hard drives, would not run in its 686 version. It would run only in its 486 version. Should a Pentium 4 be able to run 686 code?
Did you even try it? I'm not certain, but it might give you the correct information anyways.
Same laptop had to run Windows XP Pro 32 bit (not XP Pro 64 bit), and could only use 2 GB RAM. I really started learning Linux on an old laptop of that vintage
LATER Pentiums were 686, based on multiples of numbers of cores on the chips. Each core was 32 bit, but the chip did multi-thread and multitask processing across cores internal to the chip.
Pentium Core 2's were one example. They still exist and are sold today for OEM'd entry level computers, and extremely limited computerized stuff in appliances and communications boxes, etc.
How could that command give the correct information? Would that file exist on the live disk? If it did how could it be correct? There is no installation of the OS using a live disk. The OS is booted from the disk. Whatever files are on the disk cannot be changed to reflect the hardware that's running the OS.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1f810spyqd5fu4s
I was unable to identify in it anything to indicate it has the No Execute bit. But I am still not sure.
CloneZilla, which I used to create my hard drive backups with, runs on a Debian Live disk. I was able to use that to create the above file.
I decided to tell BIOS to enable RAID. The idea was to have RAID enable when I did restore from the CloneZilla created backup. When I attempted a system boot with RAID enabled a message at the start of boot up showed the disk at Port 1 had an error. Windows XP, which used to at least start to boot showing its logo and the moving balls for a few seconds before rebooting in the endless cycle, will not do that anymore. The system hangs without displaying anything but the cursor a few lines from the top of the screen. I disabled RAID in the BIOS and it did the same thing. It appears when I turned on RAID I took a step backward.
I hoped that when the CMOS battery was replaced the disk error at Port 1 at boot up would go away. Now it appears I will have to take the computer to a shop and get that disk error fixed. Meanwhile I am going to try to get the Windows XP restored on the disk at Port 0 alone. Before I do that I need to be sure about the No Execute bit. Any help on that would be appreciated
The road map now is to find out for sure if my CPU has the No Execute bit (I doubt it does).
Do the instructions http://icrontic.com/article/repair_windows_xp with the disk in its current state.
If the restore does not work, to restore the disk with the back up created by CloneZilla and try the restore once again.
http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/10/4272-2/
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20050104085308.html
At this time it does not do any good to turn on RAID because there is an error message for one of the disks when RAID is on.