Last weekend I have a fight with my wife’s laptop. It’s a 10” one, with no CD-ROM, and win Windows XP pre-installed (in my case is Windows XP, but the it’s also valid for Windows 7 and 8). The normal procedure of reset the computer is to come back to initial values, as it comes from fabric. Just press Alt+F11 when booting and you’ll get the Acer Recovery, next, next, next …. and after 30 minutes … the laptop is ready!
That’s the theory!
Error when formating
In practice, I received a format error and 30 minutes become in a few hours. I did several tries with no success, and that’s where my fight against the laptop began. A few days!! I needed to search for a solution, and finally, I got it! Here I told you what I did.
Because the error comes when formating the hard disk, I thought it could be a good idea to verify the state of the hard disk. To do that, I used Hiren’s Boot CD that I have on an 1 Gb USB. To create this USB with Hiren’s, you can find a lot of tutorials on Internet, all of them tell exactly the same things and the same steps I’m not going to reproduce here. I used a USB boot creator for Linux distrobutions, just tell in the ISO was Hiren’s boot!! In a few minutes, I had the USB ready for action!
Hiren’s Boot CD, a handy tool
Hiren’s Boot CD is a very handy toold everybody should be aware of, in case of urgency. I remember, a few years ago, I remove the MBR of another laptor, I could do nothing, so, thanks to Mini Windows XP tool, I could copy the files to an external disk, before format and re-installing the Operating System. Of course … be careful with this tools!!
Creating the USB with Windows, costs me a little, becasue some tutorials were more complcated that others (i watched several of them). I finally decided to phone my friend @obijuankenobi74 and he told me to watch out with the SATA drivers. At the end, the best option was to download WinSetupFromUSB versión 1.0 beta 8. I also tried versión, la 0.2.3, but version 1.0 is more complete!!
The most positive feature of this tool is having the ability of creating an USB where you can prepare more than one operating system on a single memory, mixing Windows XP, Windows 7 and a Linux distribución (of course, the USB capacity should be enought to allow 3 OS, or whatever you need or like!). I did a USB exclusively for Windows XP, the one I was only interested in. Here in this link (http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/) you have a full tutorial on creating a USB!!
Booting from USB with Windows XP
Booting from USB was no problem (of course, I needed to load the SATA driver first), starting to fotmar the HD, copying Windows files … and a new error raised!!! this time it could be worst because I receive a Windows warning, because a file was needed and I didn’t bother of that. The file was iaStor.sys., and I downloaded here , add it uncompressed to the USB with Windows XP, and when installing, I chose the right path to the file, and … end of problems!! My Windows XP was up and running again!!
Although this blog is dedicated to programming and databases, I would like to show you other important tools for solving operating systems problems, and … hiren’s boot CD is a very useful tool.
Have a nice day!