I have a HP Pavillion 4805us laptop running windows XP Home Edition, and I've now had the OS become corrupted following a Windows Update-prompted restart three times in two months, and twice in a week. I'm hoping someone can tell me if this is a hardware problem (in which case I think its time for a new computer), or if I'm just spectacularly unlucky as far as OS corruptions go (in which case I think its still time for a new computer, but I'll put in the effort to repair corruption #3 so we have a backup laptop). Perhaps there's something wrong with Windows Update? Yet that seems unlikely, since the resolution to corruption #1 was reformating the hard drive.
More details:
Corruption #1: After a routine windows update, I restarted the computer, and it only booted up to a blinking cursor--Windows never started. Various solutions including working with the recovery console to rebuild boot.ini, reinstalling the OS I think a couple other things, were to no avail, and finally I got all my data off using Puppy Linux and reformated the hard drive. This was a couple months ago.
Corruption #2: After another routine windows update, I restarted, and it booted to an error:
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
Widows_root\System32\Ntoskrnl.exe
Please re-install a copy of the above file. "
I was able to get to the repair console and tried both rebuilding boot.ini and replacing ntoskrnl.exe from the cd, but the former didn't do anything, and the latter wouldn't go through (produced a message like "cannot create file"). There were also some intermitant problems where, while using the repair console, the keyboard would stop responding, requiring me to reboot and start again. This time reinstalling XP did the trick and it booted just fine, and I set about getting everything updated to SP3 (my recovery disk has SP1). This was last Thursday.
Corruption #3: After rebooting following installing SP3, windows boots to the following error:
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
System32\DRIVERS\isapnp.sys
You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD-ROM.
Select `r` at the first screen to start repair"
This was this morning. I haven't tried doing anything to it yet. I'm hoping someone can tell me if I should bother.
More details:
Corruption #1: After a routine windows update, I restarted the computer, and it only booted up to a blinking cursor--Windows never started. Various solutions including working with the recovery console to rebuild boot.ini, reinstalling the OS I think a couple other things, were to no avail, and finally I got all my data off using Puppy Linux and reformated the hard drive. This was a couple months ago.
Corruption #2: After another routine windows update, I restarted, and it booted to an error:
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
Widows_root\System32\Ntoskrnl.exe
Please re-install a copy of the above file. "
I was able to get to the repair console and tried both rebuilding boot.ini and replacing ntoskrnl.exe from the cd, but the former didn't do anything, and the latter wouldn't go through (produced a message like "cannot create file"). There were also some intermitant problems where, while using the repair console, the keyboard would stop responding, requiring me to reboot and start again. This time reinstalling XP did the trick and it booted just fine, and I set about getting everything updated to SP3 (my recovery disk has SP1). This was last Thursday.
Corruption #3: After rebooting following installing SP3, windows boots to the following error:
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
System32\DRIVERS\isapnp.sys
You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD-ROM.
Select `r` at the first screen to start repair"
This was this morning. I haven't tried doing anything to it yet. I'm hoping someone can tell me if I should bother.
