Problem after executing Partition Magic - Pci.sys is corrupted

[plannom]

I have a Sony Vaio with a partitioned Drive: C & D. It came that way. It's been a constant problem. The C partition keeps running out of space. So I purchased Partition Magic and a year ago successfully took space from the D partition to use in the C partition. Yesterday I had to do the same thing. However, after it made the change or at least I think it did, because I didn't sit there and watch. When I came back it seemed to have finished and I rebooted. I got a message that said "Missing Operating System". I rebooted with my Windows XP Pro CD to see if it would bring everything back. It said "Press any key to boot from the CD". It went through the Intel logo screen, then a blue screen with "Windows Setup" in the upper left and in the middle of the screen "The file pci.sys is corrupted. Press any key to continue." I pressed a key and it started the same process over again with the same error message. I can't access anything, can't reboot and I don't have any other emergency boot disk. I thought about removing the drive and sticking it in my wife's other matching Vaio desktop, formatting it and using it as a secondary drive, buying a new drive to stick in my Vaio and try reinstalling Windows to it.

Can anyone help me on this or is getting a new drive my only alternative at this point?

 

[strategic]

When you put in the XP CD and it boots off the cd, on the 1st screen, you should be able to choose Repair. Press r, and this will start the Recovery Console.

Does this option appear? Is this the route you took? If you can get this far, you'll need to replace the pci system file from the operating system CD.

 

[Rick]

"The file pci.sys is corrupted. Press any key to continue."

Well, anything goes after resizing your partitions.. But I've seen this error repeatedly because of bad RAM (memory). It would be an interesting coincidence, but try running memtest to verify that your memory is working properly.

You can burn the ISO to a CD using imgburn.

 

[plannom]

I don't get a screen where I can select r for repair. I just go in a loop as I mentioned before. I can't access anything either.

 

[Rick]

I can't access anything either.

If you don't have access to another PC to make a memtest CD, what you *can* do is turn off your computer, open it up and take out all of your RAM modules. If you only have one memory module, this technique won't work unless you have some compatible memory on hand.

Put only *one* back in, turn the computer on and see how far you get. If it doesn't work, put a different module in its place and see if the results are different. If you get the same behavior with two different modules, then the problem is not memory. If one of the modules seems to work and one of them doesn't, then you have yourself a bad memory module.

 

[mikey12561]

Okay I'm gonna try helping even though I'm new to the site but I got 6 years of comp work behind me hehe.

Okay looks to me after you did that partition remake with Partition magic that is may have wiped your actual partition on C out. I need to ask how old is this sony Viao. Yes like the others said up above that PCI.SYS is corrupted can popup when a memory is faulity. However looking at the way this happened I highly doubt it was the ram.

So my two questions are this. How old is the computer. Is it fairly new like around 2006 and up. If this is the case the reason you can be getting the PCI.SYS is corrupted is your computer has PCI-Express graphic card slots in it. The windows install will not recognize the PCI-Express slot and bus because SP1 and SP2 came out before PCI-Express ever did. So this what you do.

Turn off your PCI bus controller in your Bios. It may something on the Lines of PCI Devices or something like that. Turn that off. Also on your Video option where it would say Which type of graphics card to boot. Switch that to auto.

Then restart and hurry and shutdown the computer. Take every device out besides a Graphics Card (Non PCI-Express), Hard Drive, CD-ROM, and A stick of Ram. Turn it on and try installing windows.

Hope this works for you. It just did me about 5 minutes ago. GL and if you need help with guiding I can get to ya.