Help! Technical Support Needed!

[Brundlefly]

The other day I was operating my IBM Thinkpad R31 without a battery when the battery ran out of juice. My Windows XP Pro saw this and started to "hibernate".

When I found my power supply and attempt to bring the system out of hibernate, a message appeared saying "A Disk Read Error Has Occurred. ctl-alt-del to restart". This was my only option other than -F11- to start IBM Product Recovery.

Whenever I hard boot now, I get option -F1- to go into BIOS Setup, -F11-, and -F12- to change boot order.

My research indicates that I probably have a bad boot sector. If I could get a command prompt, i could run "fixboot" which might correct the problem. But I do not see a way to get to command prompt with options that are available to me.

I do not have a floppy drive. I have a DVD-CDRW. XP Pro came pre-loaded - I do not have XP Pro CDs..

Is there a way for me to get past this without using that -F11- to low-level reformat?

[Asher]

You can get the XP Pro CDs next-day shipped to you by calling IBM Tech Support. All you gotta do is ask for them.

What you need to use is the Windows XP Recovery Console to run fixboot, which is using the XP CD as a boot disc...

That said, there's probably a fixboot equivalent freeware on the internet. Burn that to a boot CD-ROM and use it I guess.

[reds4ever]

Do you have a 'boot from USB' option in Bios? You could boot from a pen drive (or whatever you call them in the States) or from a USB HD or floppy

[Brundlefly]

Thanks Asher. I bought this used laptop off of Ebay. I dont have any purchase documentation. I hope all that IBM tech Support needs is a serial number or something. I dont know if it is still under warranty.. How much will I have to pay for support if it is not?

reds: no i do not have that option in BIOS... but that is a good idea if I did have such an option..

[reds4ever]

What resources/software do you have access to on other computers?

Can't you make a bootable CD on another computer? theres plenty of 'How-to's' on the net.

[Brundlefly]

Okay. I made a bootable CD on a friends computer. Got into Console mode and tried 'fixboot'. Didnt work.

Called MS Support, spoke to a gentleman with a thick Indian accent who determined within 10 seconds that he could not help me. He connected me to IBM Tech Support where I spoke to a man with an even thicker African accent. This guy was trying to be helpful, even after he told me I was out of warranty and it would cost 100-500 to solve my problem. He suggested I do a full install and that my data was lost..

Undaunted, I pressed on. I rebooted again, this time intead of going into console mode, I chose Windows XP Install. To my surprise, there was an option to "Repair XP" on the next screen along with the option to do a full Install. I chose Repair XP. (Why didnt either of those Support reps suggest this?!)

When I rebooted after the repair, I was able to get much farther. At least XP tried to load and resume from my hibernate.. However, I was stopped dead when I saw a message "Missing or corrupt c:\windows\system32\config\system.sav. Try to repair in recovery mode".

Problem is, I no longer have that option to "Repair XP" when I reboot. Now my only options are to Reinstall windows or go into console mode. I found a workaround that involves renaming system.sav and refreshing the System Hive from backup.

But here is the strangest thing: System.SAV appears in the directory listing of the 'windows\system32\config\" directory, but I am unable to perform any kind of rename or copy with it because the OS says it doesnt exist!! But yet I go to that directory in console, do a 'dir' listing and there it is! I tried writing another file over it - no luck.. I even tried copying all of the files in this directory EXCEPT system.sav to another directory and then renaming the config directory to 'configold'. Wont let me do it because "config is being used by another process'.

SO, any of you tech whizzes have anymore suggestions for me? I'm running out of ideas. Is there any kind of data recovery process I could D/L from a CD in recovery mode that would move my data to a non-windows partition? My Windows partition is NTFS and I dont know how to address the long NTFS directory names in a console copy command..

[aneeshm]

Sorry , misread your post .

[Atahualpa]

You could also delete the hibernate state.. ofc you will lose unsaved changes or some documents as a whole that you had opened by the time Windows went into hibernate. But if you had nothing important running, it could be worth a try.

For some of Windows XPs options you have to hit F6 or F8 (I never remember that) during the time it shows the boot screen.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by bfg9000
But here is the strangest thing: System.SAV appears in the directory listing of the 'windows\system32\config\" directory, but I am unable to perform any kind of rename or copy with it because the OS says it doesnt exist!! But yet I go to that directory in console, do a 'dir' listing and there it is!

Is your HDD in NTFS or FAT32?

If it is in FAT32, you could try to boot into DOS with a floppy (the Windows 98 SE CD also works, probably the Me CD also) and try renaming it from there.

If it is in NTFS, then you need to connect it to another computer running XP. IIRC, there are adapters that let you connect notebook HDDs to desktops.

Of course, if you can connect your HDD to another computer, you can always dump your data out and completely reinstall XP.

Before you do any of these, maybe you can go into console, and try 'attrib -r -s -h system.sav," then renaming to somethign else, such as "system.sav.000."

[Brundlefly]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Is your HDD in NTFS or FAT32?

If it is in FAT32, you could try to boot into DOS with a floppy (the Windows 98 SE CD also works, probably the Me CD also) and try renaming it from there.

If it is in NTFS, then you need to connect it to another computer running XP. IIRC, there are adapters that let you connect notebook HDDs to desktops.

Of course, if you can connect your HDD to another computer, you can always dump your data out and completely reinstall XP.

Before you do any of these, maybe you can go into console, and try 'attrib -r -s -h system.sav," then renaming to somethign else, such as "system.sav.000."

NTFS.

What kind of adapter would I need to connect my laptop to another PC? Would I connect them by ethernet port or USB ? Does this make the PC recognize my laptop as an external drive or is there some config necessary on PC to recognize laptop as network drive?

I'll try attrib command, but I think it will not work..

[Urban Ranger]

There are these cases which accept a notebook HDD, and can be connected directly to an IDE cable, IIRC.