fatal error using recovery disks

[yokor]

Hello again,

My vaio fx702 can't load windows xp anymore because it says ntfs.sys is missing or corrupted. That is weird but I tried to use another copy of the winxp cd (because the people of sony just give the recovery cd's) and it won't start the recovery console, it asks to press f2 for automatic repair, then the bar at the bottom of the screen goes blank and the cdrom stops spinning. Because I didn't know what else to do I tried the first sony recovery cd and it said there was a fatal error and I had to reboot. What do I do now?

Kind Regards, Timothy

[leven]

Hi Timothy,


"corrupted NTFS.sys" is usually caused by a physical bad hard disk, corrupted filesystem or bad memory.

If your CD is not loading,and you can`t use the Recovery Console this means the possibility of bad hardware.

Some other possibilities include a bad IDE cable, bad drive channel or bad memory slot. Overheating could also be a problem as well as corrupted or buggy chipset/IDE/SCSI drivers. But drivers would not affect the CDROM during Windows XP setup.

The most certain way to fix this is by trial and error (replace the memory with known-good memory, attempt an XP repair with a new IDE cable or on a different IDE channel, use a known-good hard disk to reinstall Windows XP... etc..)

I think you should run a test on your memory and hard disk before you do anything else. If you have more than one stick of RAM, take one out and try the CD. If it does not work, swap the sticks and try with the other one. If neither gets you running it probably isn`t memory.

Memory test:
memtest86 Can run from floppy
http://www.memtest86.com/

Windows Memory Diagnostic Can run from floppy
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp


Drive tests:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7602

Elaine

[yokor]

Thank you :smileygrin:

I already tried my memory strips by using one at the time and swapping them, but not yet the hdd itself because I didn't know of a dos program that could help me, so many thanks.
Getting another cable could be a problem, but I'll surf the internet to find a retailer if dft can#t see the disk.
I'll let you know what the problem was.

Kind regards, Timothy

[leven]

You`re very welcome.

Good luck and yes please let us know how you get on.

Elaine

[yokor]

Hi,

It took some time and I spent all day checking and erasing the disk. Then the sony cd still didn't work, but after partioning the disk it all apears to work at least I don't get the error message anymore. The only thing now is that my hdd got overheated after all that writing and reading, so after crasching I decided to let the disk cool off before trying again. I'll let you know if it finally worked or not.

Kind regards, Timothy

[yokor]

It finally works again. Yesterday late at night I tried to use the recovery cd again and I got the same error again so I started the whole process again and when I tried again it still didn't work. At the end of my wits I searched google for "arcdisp.c", the file setup said that was wrong. There was a link to a forum and that had a link to microsoft knowledge base. The tip they gave was to remove one of the memory strips and try it again. That did work and now my vaio is up and running again. Thanks for the help.

Timothy

[leven]

Timothy

I don`t understand this.
I thought that was one of the first things we tried?

Elaine

[yokor]

I think there were multiple problems. I first tried swapping memory and when that didn't help I started the whole hdd checking bit. When that didn't work I again took one out and then it suddenly worked, so what I think is that my memory wasn't to goog and my hdd had a big error on it, so they both needed to be fixed before I could do a recovery. Why yesterday it didn't gave an error after checking the hdd I don't know. This memory problem could be spotted earlier if I would have used the memory check program you suggested, but I was lazy and I already tried one strip at the time and thought that would be enough [:">]

Timothy

[leven]

Ah..........now I get it :smileyrolling_eyes:

Never mind as long as it is fixed now.

Elaine