Problem booting up windows

[kritius]

Not sure whether this should go under security and the web or here but I think that it has elements of both.

My friend was having a lot of problems with viruses on his computer so he had left it until I could have a look for him, only problem is his sister went on his computer last night and everytime that AVG free sent up a warning she just ignored it.

When he turned it on this morning it just crashed on him, he has tried to use system restore but when he goes to use the last good config it crashes out and gives him the error,

"the section IDA_CREATE_USER_DRIVE does not contail a valid dialog template"

He doesnt have recovery discs for this HP Pavillion because he wasnt supplied any, the recovery was on a partition on the hard drive.

He is not able to give me any system specs other than its an HP Pavillion, 200gb hard drive, running xp sp2.

Unfortunately I wont be able to get there for a few days so if anyone has any idea on how to at least get him started up then it would be muchly appreciated.

 

[rf6647]

I would recommend ordering a set of Recovery CDs from HP. Cost is reasonable & delivery is fairly quick (states-side).

Google part of error ! contain a valid dialog template

Based on those posts, it looks grim. The Recovery Partition did not appear to be accessible. It was not clear if was a corrupted load or a HD failure, but I suspect the latter.

This case has elements of malware. A boot virus could very well break the OEM load, since there are elements of the boot that processes a function key to launch the Recovery Partition. Pure conjecture on my part.

Attempt to recover the data & hope for the best.

 

[kritius]

Any ideas on how best to recover the data?

Think that he will just have to order the cds and hope that they will work.

Thanks for the info, my guess was the HD was corrupted as well.

Any other ideas feel free to jump in.

 

[rf6647]

I am not frugal. I would invest in a new HD and the Recovery CDs. If the old drive works, bring back data from the old HD. Afterwards, use Fdisk & reformat to clean the old HD. And then decide if the old HD is reliable enough to incorporate in a backup routine / stategy.

My dad's trouble was not as pronounced, but the 'burp' was enough to decide to retire the old HD with a Ghost image file on it. This image of the oem load was cleaned from the bloatware & new applications were applied & configured. I call this a 'Gold Image'. It is cheap insurance against the next disaster. The old HD is safely put away.

 

[kritius]

Sounds like this is the answer then, ill get the news to him and he can start shopping around. thanks everyone.

 

[rf6647]

postscript

OEM loads are fussy. The old HD was first partitioned into 3 partitions with the Ghost image in its own partition at the end of the drive. OEM Recovery CDs rebuild the the disk with the Recovery Partition (fat32) first, followed by OEM XP. Having done this more than a year ago, I recall that the Recovery accepted this configuration of the HD. I believe a partitioning of the HD after re-installing the oem xp breaks the Recovery Console and I could not re-install it. The Ghost image was installed over the 'factory vintage' load to verify the image.

I am very conscientious about licensing restrictions, but I am certainly no legal scholar. Since oem loads are bound to the system, I feel that this 'verified' image qualifies as an archive. And, hey, I've got 2 shots at pulling something out of this drive to regain a working system. Of course, it is hoped that all this redundancy becomes a wasted effort. And, yeah, these 2 eggs are sitting in the same basket. Oh well.