Re: Repair Windows XP by using the XP installation CD
On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:39:37 -0300, "John John (MVP)"
<audetweld@nbnet.nb.ca> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>Franc Zabkar wrote:
>> I tried a few experiments on a 13GB FAT32 volume that had been
>> formatted by Win98SE.
<snip>
>> Next I completely zeroed the boot sector. This time FIXBOOT created a
>> 10MB FAT12 volume. At no time did it use the backup boot sector at
>> sector 6. In fact, I have demonstrated in the past that the XP
>> installation process does not update the backup boot sector, instead
>> it leaves the original Win98 version intact. It appears that XP is not
>> even aware that it exists.
>
>Yes, if I remember correctly I believe that fixboot does not use the
>backup boot sector if it was created by Windows 98, in other words the
>backup boot sector would have to be NT (XP) compatible for fixboot to
>use it as a backup. Remember that fixboot is a Windows 2000/XP utility,
>it doesn't care about W9x problems and it won't attempt to restore a W9x
>boot sector, it will attempt to restore an NT compatible boot sector. I
>think that if the drive had been formated with Windows 2000/XP that
>fixboot would have used the backup boot sector.
You missed the point. Windows XP was installed onto a clean FAT32
partition created by Win98. This *installation* process had no reason
to retain a Win98 backup boot sector, yet it did not replace the
backup with one of its own. This suggests that XP does not use a
backup boot sector under any circumstances. At the very least, the
installation procedure is flawed.
Had XP bothered to consult the backup boot sector, then it could have
made use of its data section and added its own boot code, as I had to
do manually afterwards. In retrospect, I could have just copied the
Win98 backup from sector 6 to sector 0, and then run FIXBOOT to
convert the code section. But by then I was too shell-shocked to trust
FIXBOOT to do anything correctly.
>> So as you can see, FIXBOOT works fine repairing boot sectors that
>> aren't really broken, but it can create a disaster when there is a
>> genuine problem, even an easily fixed one.
>
>Create a disaster? Hardly, the disaster was created when you went to
>the extreme of zeroing out the boot sector! Being that there was no
>compatible sector to use as a replacement fixboot barfed and wrote a
>FAT12 boot sector to the drive, the end result was no worse than having
>a zeroed out boot sector, the boot sector was already trashed before
>fixboot ran!
The stupid thing was that XP wrote anything at all, let alone a floppy
drive volume. If anything, it should have been smart enough to consult
the partition table and recreate a default boot sector based on what
it found there, in the exact same way that it would have done during a
format.
BTW, Windows 98SE has absolutely no problem with a zeroed boot sector
because it is smart enough to see the backup, even in the absence of
the pointer that Bill mentioned.
>Fixboot does not trash or change FAT32 partitions into
>different partitions, when these problems occur the boot sector was
>already completely thrashed so you cannot put the blame on fixboot, the
>only thing that you can put on fixboot is that it could not overcome the
>problems caused by an already completely borked boot sector, fixboot
>left the old backup boot sector in place for you to manually recover,
Hmm, so if FIXBOOT knew about the backup boot sector (which I don't
believe is true), then why wasn't it smart enough to use it?
>fixboot created no more of a disaster than what was already present.
AFAICS the disaster would be compounded when you write to the FAT12
volume. I believe you will trash the first copy of the original FAT
because the new root directory will now be located within its space.
That appears to be what happened in my case, when XP wrote its system
information stuff to the drive. This still presents no problem for
Windows 98's Scandisk which can repair such errors (by using FAT#2 to
reconstruct FAT#1), but XP's CHKDSK wasn't able to do this.
>Fixboot is not an advanced data recovery tool and it cannot overcome all
>boot sector corruption problems, in cases when fixboot cannot recover
>the boot sector Microsoft advises users to manually recover the boot sector.
>
>John
The problem is that Fixboot didn't fix anything at all. Instead it
made the problem worse. I would think that a better strategy would be,
if you don't know what's wrong, then don't fix it, or at least make an
intelligent attempt. Writing a 10MB floppy boot sector to a 38GB hard
drive partition is indefensible.
- Franc Zabkar
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