Windows XP goes kaboom?

In this case, you may have alternative recovery options. These may be presented to you when you power on the PC.

You can access the typical recovery options by pressing one of the Function keys. Each manufacturer is different, F2, F10, F12 and so on. They will appear on the top, or bottom of the screen when you first turn on the PC. They sometimes go by really quickly, and you may have to power cycle a few times just to read the options available. You may investigate the recovery options, just be aware of the operative “RE” words - Reload, Recover, Restore. These are almost always detrimental to your data. They are designed to “blow away”� the hard drive and restore it to factory condition. PC manufacturers create recovery partitions on your hard drive and hide them for emergency. Essentially, they take a portion of your hard drive and store a compressed version of your hard drive when it was new. This is called a recovery partition and is usually hidden from use.

When accessed (by pressing one of the F2, F10, F12 keys) , it decompresses all those files to the portion of the hard drive that you use. This means that the hard drive is formatted and everything is wiped clean. You end up with a factory-new system. All your Windows updates, driver updates, antivirus subscriptions, personal data, bookmarks, favorites, cookies, browsing history and preferences are gone. You are back up and running again - AND if you ran a backup, you could restore your personal data. If you didn’t run a backup, you have to rebuild and customize the computer again to your liking.

Accessing the Windows XP Recovery Console requires you to boot the computer from the Windows XP recovery CD and follow the prompts to “Repair your Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console.”�

Note that you will need your administrator’s password to access your system. Have this written down somewhere beforehand, otherwise you’ll have to reset it. Resetting your Windows XP administrator password is an entirely different process. You can use third-party software to do so. It will require a bootable CD that you can purchase or download.

Once you have booted, and subsequently logged into the Recovery Console, you are presented with a DOS-looking command line. There are a number of commands that can assist in repairing startup problems. Here are some of the Microsoft XP Recovery Console Commands. Some examples are: bootcfg, fixboot, fixmbr, chkdsk. Each command has associated help reference. Type the command /? - example chkdsk /? - to access it.

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