Yesterday while at work, I left my office for a little bit and left my laptop running. When I came back my laptop had crashed with a serious error and wouldn't even boot into safe mode-it just continuously rebooted and showed the BSOD for about a 1/2 second then flash back out and reboot. Anyway, I was pissed to say the least and was damn determined to fix it without a format and rebuild since I have so much programming info and games on my laptop. So for the first time today I tried doing a Restore via the XP Recovery Console. It went very well and I had my laptop up and running in about 1 hour, vs a 4-6 rebuild, loading the OS, downloading drivers, downloading windows updates, and all the other software suites. Mind you I couldn't get into a windows desktop to perform diagnostic tests or determine exactly what had happened to it. I'll share the process with anyone that wishes to know how to do it.
Conagher save your fingers someone already did a pretty nice jop typing it with screenshots http://www.informationweek.com/LP/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897
I tried the repair on this machine a couple of weeks ago when this one crashed, still ended up doing a format and reinstall.
Infidel, The method you linked to "IS NOT" going through the recovery console, but instead is using the repair option in windows setup. You would have to reinstall all of the windows updates unless you have a slipstreamed XP CD. The Recovery Console goes through a DOS Command Prompt box. Instead of Repairing XP, you're just basically doing a XP Restore via a Command Prompt box. Quigs, I'll post details of the process, but I'm defragging my hard drive on the laptop at the moment via Safe Mode, which does a better job since it loads the minimum amount of drivers to get into the desktop. That and I just mounted a new front tire on the XS1100 special this evening. All I need now is to get one pilot jet out of one carb, motorcycle title and tags, and one side cover and I'm ready to start cruising to work on the bike
Wasn't too long ago I had a similar problem with the tower, start, crash, restart. Repair didn't work, couldn't get to the first step during light off. Wound up doing a format (pulled the hard drive, formatted it on another machine) and reload everything imaginable, still forgot a few things. Backups of data are well worth a weekly PIA, this I know and do. We think it was a corrupted dll file, but had no means to diagnose. Bleeping computers anyway, every household needs a geek these days (though I'd rather have a maid.)
Conager keep up the good work , you might create a thread and lock it on how to do this for future SM members.