recovery console issue

[sunspore]

A hard drive in aN HP Pavilion wouldn't boot. It was loaded with XP home edition. I pulled the drive from the machine and put it into another machine to see if it would boot. It couldn't find the boot record, and I realized that HP probably configured it so that the OS had to match their BIOS. I decided to run CHKDSK from the Recovery Console via MY copy of XP HOME CD (non vendor-specific), as the HP machine had no support disks with it. Low and behold, when I replaced the drive into the HP machine, it booted fine. Then I decided to go back into Recovery Console on the HP machine, again via my XP Home CD, to see if there were any other utilities that might be helpful. So I boot to the CD, and choose R (Repair an installation). The next line asks me to choose an installation to repair. There is only one installation on the drive. After some experimentation, I found that I needed to enter "1" to get to the next line, which asks me to enter the administrator password. There is no administrator password for this installation, so I went in and added one, but it kept telling me that the password was invalid.

So my questions are 1) Why does it ask me which installation I want to repair, and 2) How do I deal with this password thing? As things stand now, I can't use Recovery Console on this machine. Do I need to use a Recovery Console installation from an HP source?

Thanks,
Drew

 

[ashpp]

> 2) How do I deal with this password thing?

HP machines are syspreped which means the password won't work.
Take a look at this - I would give HP a call for more help.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308402

 

[bcastner]

You can have parallel installations of XP, so it needs to ask which one to repair.

If there is no password then just hit enter. This is not the place to create a password. Just hit enter. If it will not accept that password, you will need to follow the advice given by AshleyPride above.

 

[bcastner]

In the alternative, install the Recovery Console as a boot option on your machine at startup. If you run the Recovery Console in this fashion, you will not have any problems once you apply Service Pack 1 to your XP installation.

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...efault.aspx?scid=kb;en-gb;307654&ln=en-gb

 

[sunspore]

Ashpp: Thanks for your insight. Sounds like you understand what is going on, and that article looks like it hits the nail right on the head. I'll go through it and see.

bcastner: I tried hitting enter without entering a password and still got the password not valid message. Also, this is not where I tried to create the password. I booted to XP and went into Contol Panel| Users and Passwords to do this. Additionally, I tried to install the Recovery Console as a boot option. I went through all the steps exactly as they are laid out, but when I reboot, it doesn't show a boot menu at all. I think that Ashpp's suggestions will help fix this too. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!

Drew