Hi All,

My friend upgrade his Norton Antivirus online. After he restarted his LAPTOP after installing Antivirus, it could not BOOT up. The system stopped with a black screen and a blinking cursor just after displaying of Compaq logo.

His laptop is Compaq Presario X1000 with Windows XP Home Edition, still with SP1 I believe.

I checked the Bios and there seems no problem. Then I tried to reinstall the Windows XP from the Recovery CD but it says that the partition is not recognized by Windows XP. I know it is easy to delete the partition but my friend will hate to lose whats on his laptop.

I got into the Recovery Console, copied a new version of boot.ini with NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files but it didn't work. I would try to run Fixboot and Fixmbr but I am afraid RUNNING fixmbr may damage the partition. Would appreciate your guys can help me out here. LIKE to stop some services or something. Thanks.

Forgot to mention that I did try to change the registry files but still could not get the system boot up.

DanielNew update on the laptop.

Finally, I ran Fixboot following by fixmbr under Recovery Console. The system boot up to allow me to select the operating system to start. Well, both are Windows XP Home Edition. No matter which one I chose, it just boot up to pass displaying of Windows XP logo and then an error message says that: Autochk program not found - skiping autocheck. And then it loops back to reboot and the same thing on and on.

I did press F8 to get into Windows Advanced Options Menu but no matter which options I chose, Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Command Prompt or others, the system read some files and then stop and get into a loop again to reboot.

I was hoping can get into the Command prompt to at least back up some data then delete the partition and reinstall everything but couldn't so FAR. If anyone can help would greatly appreciate. Thanks.

DanielYour options are to "slave' this hard drive into another computer with a CDRW drive and save your data, OR load a LinuxLivecD and then save your files to a CDRW or across a network or to a PenDrive.

http://knoppix.com/Thanks. I have experience with adding a second (slave) hard disk with a desktop but don't know about adding a laptop hard disk to a desktop. Also I am not clear about "Slave this hard drive into another computer with a CDRW drive". I have read your respond to other posts and your suggestion about load a LinuxLiveCD. I will try that and see if I can get it to work. Then if necessary will try slave it to a desktop. Thanks a lot. Will post the result after I tried it.

DanielIt's real easy to use a Linux Live CD. Just burn it as an ISO. Merely copying the files will not work. Nero and other burning software can do this.  It is really easy and thank you so much. Knoppix is really great. Highly recommended for backing up data from a malfunction Windows system. Again appreciate your help, GX1_man.

Imagine that, another Windows user SAVED by Linux!!!!!  

Glad you are up and running, and thanks for posting back.