Associate
- Joined
- 29 Jun 2004
- Posts
- 200
- Location
- Leicester (home) / Leeds (uni)
Hi guys, hope you can help with my housemate's PC problem.
James has two SATA hard drives: a 160GB Maxtor 6B160P0 (reported by Windows as drive C
and a 120GB Maxtor 6Y120L0 (drive D, and a DVD-RW drive (possibly E. Windows is installed on C: and D: is used as a storage drive.
Around five days ago, he downloaded a program which actually installed a fake version of mIRC. This sat in the toolbar, and every time he tried to close it it opened 10 IE windows.
He did a search for "mIRC" and found that it had been installed to C:\Windows\system32\include . Also contained within that directory was svchost.exe. James deleted the entire "include" directory.
His system worked fine, with numerous shut downs and restarts, but for one problem: every time he tried to open a web browser (IE or Firefox) a Windows message appeared:
We then tried to boot from his Windows installation CD and use the "Repair" function. However, I accidentally pressed and held "R" button on his keyboard, mistakenly thinking it was the repair function other than the Recovery Console (when I was meant to do "To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER", then select the Windows installation).
Now, when he boots up without the Windows disk, the system POSTs and beeps, but hangs on a flashing cursor. When he boots with the disk, it says "Press any key to boot from CD", shows the progression of the dots, then hangs.
When we decide to actually boot from CD, Windows Setup goes through the "Loading files" as expected.
The "Welcome to Setup" screen appears with "To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER". and "To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R." I selected the former, then pressed F8 to accept the agreement, however I was expecting a message asking me to select the Windows installation. Instead, the following appeared:
When I go the recover console, bootcfg /list says:
bootcfg /scan says:
chkdsk c: /p initially showed one error which was fixed with /r, and now it reports that there is no error. (C: is the larger, Windows install drive, but dir shows that it's the storage drive. dir c: says "The volume in drive C is New Volume (and New Volume actually does contain the music files)."
cd d: displays D:\ but doesn't change to that drive, but dir d: displays the contents of the CD, rather than the storage drive. dir e: says that e: doesn't exist.
However, chkdsk d: /p shows
No other drive letters work apart from C: and D:, it doesn't seem to recognise the Windows install drive.
When we set 6Y120L0 as the boot HDD and the second boot device (i.e. the real storage drive), it boots from CD without the "Press any key to boot from CD" prompt.
James's other specs are:
AMI BIOS 939A8X-M BIOS P1.60
Any ideas? Could pressing "r" really bork an OS to that extent?
Cheers, Nick
James has two SATA hard drives: a 160GB Maxtor 6B160P0 (reported by Windows as drive C
and a 120GB Maxtor 6Y120L0 (drive D, and a DVD-RW drive (possibly E. Windows is installed on C: and D: is used as a storage drive.Around five days ago, he downloaded a program which actually installed a fake version of mIRC. This sat in the toolbar, and every time he tried to close it it opened 10 IE windows.
He did a search for "mIRC" and found that it had been installed to C:\Windows\system32\include . Also contained within that directory was svchost.exe. James deleted the entire "include" directory.
His system worked fine, with numerous shut downs and restarts, but for one problem: every time he tried to open a web browser (IE or Firefox) a Windows message appeared:
We then tried to boot from his Windows installation CD and use the "Repair" function. However, I accidentally pressed and held "R" button on his keyboard, mistakenly thinking it was the repair function other than the Recovery Console (when I was meant to do "To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER", then select the Windows installation).
Now, when he boots up without the Windows disk, the system POSTs and beeps, but hangs on a flashing cursor. When he boots with the disk, it says "Press any key to boot from CD", shows the progression of the dots, then hangs.
When we decide to actually boot from CD, Windows Setup goes through the "Loading files" as expected.
The "Welcome to Setup" screen appears with "To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER". and "To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R." I selected the former, then pressed F8 to accept the agreement, however I was expecting a message asking me to select the Windows installation. Instead, the following appeared:
When I go the recover console, bootcfg /list says:
bootcfg /scan says:
chkdsk c: /p initially showed one error which was fixed with /r, and now it reports that there is no error. (C: is the larger, Windows install drive, but dir shows that it's the storage drive. dir c: says "The volume in drive C is New Volume (and New Volume actually does contain the music files)."
cd d: displays D:\ but doesn't change to that drive, but dir d: displays the contents of the CD, rather than the storage drive. dir e: says that e: doesn't exist.
However, chkdsk d: /p shows
No other drive letters work apart from C: and D:, it doesn't seem to recognise the Windows install drive.
When we set 6Y120L0 as the boot HDD and the second boot device (i.e. the real storage drive), it boots from CD without the "Press any key to boot from CD" prompt.
James's other specs are:
AMI BIOS 939A8X-M BIOS P1.60
Any ideas? Could pressing "r" really bork an OS to that extent?
Cheers, Nick
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