Hey everyone. I hope someone here can give me some insight on a major problem I'm currently having. I was trying to set up a tape drive, and the software I was installing needed my administrator password. To make a long and terrible story short, I tried to do a walkthrough I found on the internet for revealing passwords (which included doing a Windows XP repair--find the link to what I tried to do here: http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009...icle.asp?ID=305 ), but when I tried to go through the steps on this page, afterward the computer won't boot. It gets to the black Windows XP screen, then resets. I have tried Safe Mode, Last good install, Boot Normally, all the options available to me, but none work. They all get to the black Windows Screen (with the bar at the bottom, right before the blue Windows screen), then it resets. I used a Windows XP Pro SP2 Retail disc to try and set the system up, if that matters.

Of course I'm right in the middle of a project, the deadline for which is coming up in the next week. And, of course, it would be really, really bad if I lost all my business emails (to say nothing of all the other programs and past and current projects I have stored on my machine), so I was hoping to not have to wipe everything out. So, is there any hope for me? I don't have a floppy disc drive, so I found this site while looking for an alternative to help my machine actually boot. If my computer will only get to the black Windows screen (though I can get to the Bios), will the UBCD 4 windows actually work? If not, does anyone know what will?

Any help would be VERY appreciated. I already lost an entire day of work trying to fix this (and hopefully not messing it up any further), if someone can help me out, I would be very grateful.

Thanks,

Brett

The UBCD4Win can hopefully help you with what you need. If you build the CD then boot it on your "broken" system, you can try to run a few repair utilities, or at least a chkdsk /r command to see if that helps. Other than that, a last ditch effort is to boot from the CD, backup all of your important and required data, and then re-install Windows from scratch. I can't say much about the instructions in that article as I didn't know about that procedure before, but maybe someone else can shed some light on the subject.

The first thing to try is to reset your system to the Last Known Good Configuration.... to get this option is just like trying to get into Safe Mode only instead of selecting Safe Mode you select the other... then restart and see if that allows you system to boot without a reboot.

If that works... you can then use the UBCD4Win to reset the password using the "Password Renew" found in the password utils area. You will have to have access to a computer with Win2000, WinXP or Win2003 on it so you can build the UBCD4Win project as well as your WinXP CD with SP1 or SP2.

Ok... now to be pessimistic and saying that didn't help... you can still use UBCD4Win to help backup your files to another drive or other media if needed.

You should know what went wrong with what you did also... the link you provided only said it was tested with WinXP and WinXP SP1... it didn't mention SP2. So that is one possible area that would cause a problem. Another area would have had to deal with your hard drive controller drivers... your motherboard may use specialized drivers that you would have had to provide during the process... if you didn't provide the proper drivers ( if different than the ones provided with XP SP2 )... that would also cause this type of issue. There is also a solution that you can use with the project if this is the case... but first try the above first.

Guys, thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my problem. I've tried the "Last Known Good Configuration", but like every other option, it gets to the black Windows screen, then resets by itself. Is there another way I can attempt to use this option? Also, I think you may be right about the drivers issue, but I think it may be regarding either my sound or video card. Could that be the issue? When doing this procedure, it actually prompted me for files from my cards' cds, but I my wife did some cleaning in my office, and I haven't been able to find either of those cds since (I will keep looking, though).

Also, the only computer I have access to now is a Mac, can I burn the UBCD4Win off of it, or do I need to find a PC to handle that?

Any other thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks so much for the time,

Brett



If I try this option, will I have to back up everything on my computer, or only the C:\ drive? As it stands, my C:\ drive is actually two 74 gig drives set up in Raid Array. Would I be able to burn off everything on a bunch of DVD+Rs, then only do a reinstall on the C:\ drive without losing everything on my other drives? Is that possible?

Thanks,

Brett

Mac's doen't count as PC's ... You will have to build the project on at least a Win2000 or newer OS ... see the how to build page for instructions http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm

Did you supply the system with the proper RAID drivers during the repair install? If not this is probably the cause for the reboots. This may also make it a bit more tricky to build a proper UBCD4Win disk... there are many RAID drivers included with the project but with the number of different versions... not all are supported directly.Chances are that it will work right away but.. only building a CD will tell where we stand in this area.

The other drives should be ok... in a worst case scenerio... you will only be installing to your C: drive. We aren't to that point yet ( worst case ).... As for the backup... the easiest method will be to copy to one of the other drives you mentioned if you have the space for your files you need. Backing up to DVD is an option but how easy it is depends on if you have two drives.. ie a CD and DVD so you don't have to constantly swap disks.

If your having trouble getting the raid set to be recognised try one the linux rescue boot CDs.

Trinity

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