trotter wrote:
> At 21:28 15/06/2009, you wrote:
>
>> Roger Munford wrote:
>>
>>> I have a PC (6 months old) which dual boots windows XP with Ubuntu which
>>> is used by the family. My son switched off the power before Windows shut
>>> down and it doesn't boot anymore. Ubuntu is unaffected and so I don't
>>> believe that any hardware has failed.
>>>
>>> My main gripe is with the so called "recovery console" which should have
>>> been the path to recovery. However it refused to start. This is
>>> apparently due to the absence of SATA drivers which can helpfully be
>>> fixed by putting them on to a floppy disk - if I had a disk drive.
>>>
>>> Thanks to Ubuntu, I have all the data and I was happy to re-install XP
>>> but when I tried that, setup just hung "looking for previous windows
>>> versions". To verify that these problems were linked to the Sata
>>> drivers, I tried an old IDE disk with a win2k partition which was found
>>> both by recovery console and setup within a few seconds. It makes me
>>> angry that a company with the resources of Microsoft do not have better
>>> tools and I am convinced that this is deliberate.
>>>
>>> During the struggle I came across ntsfix which unfortunately wasn't a
>>> substitute for chkdsk but it reset XP's log which triggered chkdsk
>>> when XP was rebooted. Unfortunately the screen went blank at the end so
>>> I don't know the results.
>>>
>>> Can anybody advise on what to do next? I installed XP on the blank SATA
>>> disk when it was new without a problem and do not understand why setup
>>> cannot do it again or at least give a sensible reason. I would prefer to
>>> leave Ubuntu undisturbed and if possible the existing windows data. I am
>>> not even confident that re formatting the whole drive would allow me to
>>> reinstall.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>>
>>> Roger
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> You can reinstall XP without the SATA drivers by going into your BIOS
>> settings and looking for something labelled SATA Native Mode or AHCI
>> mode. If you have the former, set it to disabled for the install, if you
>> have the latter set it to IDE (they're the same things just different
>> names). This setting makes your SATA drive behave like an PATA drive for
>> the install. Once you've reinstalled the AHCI drivers for your
>> motherboard you can change the setting back.
>>
>
> Yes its called something like NativeIDE on my gigabyte MB.
>
> I left it as IDE since syllable OS and w2k doesnt support AHCI with my
> gigabyte motherboard.
>
> There is also a roll your own windows install cd that can be made with
> your motherboard drivers. I havent done it myself though so i dont have a
> link.
>
> Tell us how you get on
>
> Martin N
>
>
>
> Owner of the bwfc yahoogroup and Co-Moderator of MiniDisc and
> amithlonopen yahoo groups.
>
>
>
For the record I found the instructions for the "roll your own windows
install cd" at
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml.
With the modified cd I could run chkdsk in the repair console which
fixed the problem.
I am still immensely irritated with MicroSoft. For £100 I don't expect
to have to go through this nonsense to fix a simple problem.
Thanks for your help.
Roger
