Recovery console question

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<great big chesty cough>

Okay, I'll take your word over Microsofts and my own experience.

</great big chesty cough>

 

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*hack* *hock* *pthoo!*

Sorry... had some phlegm.

 

Ignoring the outbreak of coughing , can you point me to a Microsoft statement that the old Chkdsk will handle a NTFS partition? The one you supplied before was the info on the XP version - which obviously *can* handle NTFS!

Harry.

 

Yeah you can create a startup disk of sorts in xp by right clicking the A drive then selecting format then checking create ms dos startup disk. Although this is a startup disk it is not a xp startup disk and I would consider it of very little use especially if you can get to the recovery console. It is dos and doesnt do ntfs and although dos chkdsk may indeed run (havent tested and dont see the point) on an ntfs drive. I just dont know. But hope that clears a few peoples coughs up. Any luck or plans with the data recovery GBL
I'm off for a pint of benylin COUGH

 

whatever happend to scandisk, does that still exist or was it phased out with win9x.

 

You can still scan the disk in XP for errors but you have to initiate it through the o/s. Scandisk then runs the next time Windows loads up.

 

I thought that was just CHKDSK, if I rember when I had my last PC 10 years a go you initiated scandisk through DOS and you got a graphical representation of the clusters on your hard disk and it would mark them with a B if they were bad.

 

If you are going to run CHKDSK to try and resolve a HDD issue in XP, you should do it from the *recovery console*. The recovery console is a set of tools available through a command line interface (very DOS like but with less power and less commands). You access the recovery console by booting from the XP CD and selecting R to repair the windows installation using the recovery console.

On some computers you might see the recovery console listed as an option in the F8 troubleshooting startup list along with safe mode and last known good etc. It appears in this list if you install XP from a command line using the switch /CMDCONS like so.. winnt32.exe /cmdcons (from the i386 folder of the XP CD).

As Harry has said, you should use the latest tools available as they evolve and change with time like everything else.

<Sniff>

 

cheers for that, I know I can get a list of commands by typing help in the recovery console but is there anywhere I can get a detailed list of what the commands do?

I obviously know fixmbr etc, I was just wondering on the other commands it may come in handy in the future when troubleshooting or when studying for an exam that has the recovery console in it.

 

I found a place where I can get details.

If I do a diskpart command will that show me if there are any other partitions on the hard disk I am not aware of?

 

It might, if it recognises the type. I would go into administration tools in control panel > computer management > *disk management* and see what is says in there.

 

Theres only the one NTFS partition showing in disk managment, I was wondering even though I have the original XP discs that the place who built my computer put a hidden partiton on there, as when I first got the PC it had an emergency admin account incase they needed to log in and help me for some reason.

But I wiped the PC not long after getting it and reinstalled everything aswell as deleting the old partition and creating a new one. I am getting a copy of xp pro tommorow and will be starting from scratch again after I have backed stuff up so I probably wont get the chance until Friday or Saturday to that.

 

Correct - but it doesn't work under DOS.

Harry.

 

Tried the floppy yet, GBL?