Seriously Screwed laptop

[Gav]

Ok ,I need help badly .

Win XP sp2 Dell Latitude X300

 

Laptop bluescreened on saturday after what I think may have been a power surge and when I reboot I get Unmountable Boot Volume error .

So to fix this I got the XP disk (which is Winxp sp 1), set the laptop to boot from CD and ran Chkdsk and Chkdsk-r. Everything was fine with that and no major issues.

 

However when I now try to boot normally I get a system32\hll.dll is corrupt or missing error so Im stuck at the safe mode/safe mode with networking etc etc screen.

Fucking hair pulling time by now so again thinking im a TNF Ultra I go for Windows Recovery Console.So again boot to CD ,let it do what it needs to do ,then go r for recovery. It loads fine but it wont accept my admin password even though to change the boot sequence it had to accept it!!! So I changed admin pw ,switched it off and on and retried and the same thing.

Im now going to go postal on someone .I have a XP disk and as a last resort I'll try to reinstall that and lose everything on my machine but I have no fucking installation key ,cant find the thing anywhere .

So ,can Anyone give me some non "Have you Rebooted" advice ??

[banger]

I'm not sure but isn't there a way to reset xp passwords . Uses a small linux boot file or something. If all else fails I'm pretty sure I have an old xp serial somewhere.

[bazbailey]

There is a way to reset XP passwords - I have a couple of CDs at home that can do this - I will have a look tonight and see how big the ISO image is. If it is manageable, I will post it up for you to download. Basically, it is a linux disk that will go into the SAM, find your account and ask if you want to blank the password.

[bazbailey]

Not really the best answer here, hope someone comes up with a better one, but if you do decide to reinstall windows, specify a different directory name.

 

I did this once, installed it to winxp instead of windows. It then let me (with more fucking about) get my old "My Documents" and so on.

 

But hopefully you'll get a better answer off someone first.

 

I always go a clean build. Then use something like Acronis True Image to make a backup of the PC image that you have built. Then if it screws up in the future, you can go back to the state it was in

[Nick Leeson]

if you install over the top it wont delete anything apart from prog settings. Users will be renamed old and the documents will be intact so long as you dont format the drive.

 

Gav, if you had a surge have you checked bios settings? reset them to failsafes. And yeah you can reset the admin password using some prewindows utilities that you'll need to burn to a disc. I did it a few weeks ago for someone who was locked out of a vista machine. Was a pain and seemed pretty perilous as it wasnt mine but it did work.

 

Is it defo hll.dll and not hal.dll? You should find both in your I386 folder anyway either on the HD or the windows disc but you'll need to extract them.

 

 

Something like...

expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll

[Uncle_Meat]

On a laptop, your XP key is usually on a sticker on the bottom of the laptop...

 

Anyway, the Trinity Rescue Kit CD will do both change passwords for you, and also help you find your product key.

 

Trinity Rescue Kit | CPR for your computer

 

Look in the dox for the winpass procedure in particular.

 

For the product key, use the Regedit function of that rescue CD, find the appropriate part of the registry to export then and follow the procedure from this link.

 

Windows XP and Vista Product Key Recovery · Dagon Design

 

 

Finally, and probably easiest of all if you have the appropriate equipment (I've got a USB to 2.5"/3.5"IDE/SATA adaptor which is invaluable for this kind of stuff) would be to whip out the HDD and connect it to another XP/Vista PC and use this

Magical Jelly Bean Software - Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder v2.0.1

 

to read it via the "Load Hive" function. This will also give you the keys for other various bits of software such as various games, MS Office, Adobe products and so on.

[Gav]

thanks for that lads ...Nick ,that was atypo ,it was the hal.dll that was the problem.

I've since managed to get a install completed but it only copied a few of my files across..lost loads of stuff ,or rather didnt lose them as the original instance of xp still exists however The password doesnt log me in ...it shows me my old screensaver and then bounces back to the password screen ...I've got a serious headache

[bazbailey]

I will post up the Linux password cracking CD tonight - did not get a chance last night. It is only a small file (about 2mb). Will then have to post instructions on how to do it. Cant guarantee it will work on your PC but give it a go