John's Tech Tips

John Seyfarth - Sump Memorial Library, Papillion

Recovering A Windows XP® Installation That Won't Boot.

Although in most cases keeping up with the latest Microsoft® updates, latest anti-virus, anti-spyware and using the Windows XP® chkdsk, disk cleanup and defragmentation utilities will keep your computer running ok, there are those times when something unknown happens that prevents your Windows XP® operating system from starting up or stopping unexpectedly.

A good possible solution without completely starting over is to us the Windows Recovery Console Utility on the Window XP® cd. Many times, this will fifix the problem without completely starting over by partitioning and formatting the drive and losing all your fifiles and programs. Here is the procedure:

  • Make sure your Windows® cd is in the cd-rom or dvd Drive .
  • Start your computer and get to the bios (Basic Input-Output System) chip before Windows® tries to start. Do this by hitting a key on your machine to get there. Most motherboards use the = key, but other use other keys such as c@, @, or ). Once you are in the bios, get to the screen where you change the fifirst boot drive or device, and change it to cd-rom or dvd.
  • Go to the exit screen and make sure that save setting and exit is highlighted, and then type y for yes or if yes is highlighted press the e key. Your machine will restart.
  • When the black and white screen comes up with Boot from cd-rom or dvd, immediately press any key on the keyboard. This will result in your machine booting off ff the Windows® cd, and just let it go and load all the drivers and start the basic text version of Windows.
  • Once everything stops, you will have a screen that gives to an option to Repair. Press the r key to start the process.
  • It will ask you to type the Administrator's password. Type it in and press the e key. It will ask you what installation you want to repair, and usually there is only one shown as I: c:\Windows. Press the I key and press e. You will normally get a c:\Windows or c:\ prompt. Type chkdsk/p and press e. This will start the Recovery Console utility and make appropriate repairs to your Windows installation. Once done, it will indicate it is complete and leave you with a c:\ or c:\Windows prompt. Type exit and press the e key. This will restart your machine.
  • You may want to change your bios back to the fifirst boot device being your hard drive. Follow the procedure in the second bullet from the top (above), except make your hard drive the fifirst boot device, and then follow the procedure in the third bullet.
  • If the repair was successful, you machine should start normally. Once started, it is a good idea to go to Windows Update® or Microsoft Update® and get the latest updates, since some fifiles during the repair process may have been replaced by earlier versions.

This procedure has worked for me on several occasions. However, there are times that it won't work, like for me last week on my own computer! I really wanted to ensure that my fifiles were preserved and even though my machine wouldn't boot, I didn't want to destroy them. So what I did was to get a new hard drive, insured that it was a master, and made a new installation on it, and attached my old drive as a slave drive. To make it a slave I moved the little jumpers, so that the drive was a slave. For those of you that don't know what a jumper is except in track and basketball, it is a little plastic item that bridges two pins, usually on the rear end of a hard drive. The label on just about all drives will tell you the configuration of jumpers with a little illustration of the fifive pairs of pins on the rear of the drive. To remove a jumper, you may need a very fifine pair of needle nose pliers, but you can normally push a jumper over a pair of pins with just your fifingers. Once you have done that, then plug in the data cable (usually the blue connector) to the primary ide connection on the motherboard, the fifirst connector (middle of the cable) to your new master drive, and the last connector on the cable (on the other end of the cable) to the old slave drive. Make sure you also connect power cables to the drives.

  • Install your drives, and once everything is connected, start up the machine, so that it starts on the cd-rom or dvd drive with your Windows® cd inserted.
  • Make your installation of Windows®, get all the updates, install anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and then go to My Computer and see if your slave drive is there. If it is, it is likely that you can just copy and paste your files from the old drive that wouldn't start to the new drive.
  • That's what I did on my machine, and it worked, and saved me! This same procedure works quite well with Windows 2000.

Windows Vista® – Update

Although my hope was to get Windows Vista® going on one of our machines in the Library, and although I downloaded the dvd image, the disc won't install because my dvd writer won't throttle down to IX speed, so I am getting a dvd from another source. Hopefully, by the next issue, I will have some feedback from some of my users in the Lab. I have some regulars that said that they would love to wring it out. On the testing front, it looks as if there may be a three month delay from the news articles I've been reading, so that pushes back the release to at least April 1, 2007.

New processors

Most of the new machines on the market are using one of the new dual core type processors. Reason is three fold. First, many of the single core processors were starting to run very hot. Secondly, with two cores, you can do two things at once, if the software and operating system is written for it. Finally, dual core processors will run 64 bit applications (programs that are written to run their instructions 63 bits at a time rather than 32 bits at a time as is done now) and operating systems. The 64 bit applications should increase performance substantially. Both amd® and Intel® are producing and marketing dual core processors (AMD® Opteron® and Athlon® and Intel® Pentium d, Core Duo® and Xeon®). Indeed, I purchased my fifirst dual core chips for the lab last year, and they do run very well, and quite a bit cooler. When you plan your next purchase of new machines, you may want to include dual core in your plans. When I did my purchase last year, the price difference between single core Pentium 4 and dual core Pentium D was about $20 per machine. The two companies are now trying to develop a quad-core chip!

Sketch Up®

While this little program doesn't directly apply to the day to day operations of libraries, I think it deserves mention. One of my side interests is woodworking, and I subscribe to a magazine titled Woodsmith® which has no ads but outstanding techniques and projects every two months. In the last issue they featured an article of a free computer aided design program called Sketchup®Lite, that is available for free download from http://www.sketchup.com. It is a sensational piece for planning small projects in my shop, and there are terrifific videos available from within the program to teach you how to use it. The application to libraries could be arrangement of furniture, or even a rough conceptual design of a new building. What is so cool about it is that you can include actual dimensions in your design, and you can walk around your finished project. In addition, it is three dimensional. So it might be a very helpful tool to someone that is trying to figure out designing a project. My son in California is a constant woodworker, and when I told him about it, he called me back, and was thrilled because it allows him to make very detailed 3d drawing of