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Trouble shooting

pbf98

Android Expert
Oct 16, 2011
1,114
182
MN
Hey all, I am in need of assistance. My sister does work for our church as the secretary, and to help save money I donated my time and rebuilt my first computer (from 2000) and gave that to them. The computer has a 750MHz AMD duron processor, 512MB ram 250GB+ hdd space (+ is because the second drive isn't listed on the drive)

I rebuilt that 2 years ago and installed a fresh copy of XP professional 32bit on it. Now there is a problem with it, it will not start.

It doesn't get to the loading windows splash screen even, it stops with the message saying

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
System32\DRIVERS\pci.sys

Then it instructs to insert the installation disk and to do the repair.. Well when I get the disk in it starts load all the files it needs but then stops and gives this message:

file setupdd.sys could not be loaded. the error code is 4


Now the MS website says that it could be due to either damaged or incompatible hardware, and instructs to remove any pci devices. which I did, but I get the same thing

I also attempted F8 and selecting restore to last know good configuration, and tried starting in safe mode

So does anyone else have any ideas? Will installing XP on a new HDD fix this issue? Or is this being caused by something much deeper than a hard drive issue?

I have never met a pc that I could not restore to working order with little money spent, will this be the one?

Thanks for your help!
 
Sorry just to add to what I wrote earlier (I had to get off the bus so was cut short).

The problem with these files is quite common. .sys and .dlls and usually its not that the file is corrupt per se, but that the disk itself has corruption.

If these files are corrupt, usually boot to recovery console and a chkdsk /r would repait them but the fact the windows disk doesn't load says to me its a HDD issue.

What you could do, is mount the drive in a Caddy on another machine and copy a working version of the file into the correct location (if it mounts)...

1) If it doesn't mount, HDD failure
2) If it does mount, put the file in place. If it then reports a DIFFERENT file, it almost certainly is a hardware fault.

The issue is either HDD hardware or software so rebuilding a different HDD should work if you cannot revive this one.

If it was a dell, you could boot into diagnostic mode... Thats really handy.
 
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It is an old Compaq, and I was thinking about going with a new HDD, so I'll give that a try and post my results.

Now if in fact the HDD is gone, will I be able to use something to extract the files from it? with something like this:
Newegg.com - StarTech UNIDOCK3U Plastic 2.5" & 3.5" Black USB 3.0 2.5in or 3.5in SATA and IDE HDD Docking Station

because i have one similar that works with ide hdds , or will everything just be lost?

Thanks for your replies!

If you already have a similar one that works with IDE aren't you covered? If the machines from 2000, It's going to be PATA (IDE). But yes, that would do the trick equally.

It depends in what way the disk has gone. It may be damaged Sectors, in which case you may be lucky and have data on some sectors that are intact. It could be the controller though and in that case, you're stuck.

Either way, the only way you'll find out is by mounting it.

If the computer has 2 bays (did you say 250GB+ means you already have 2 HDDs?) you could install on the other disk and mount the "broken" disk as a slave in the second bay. For data recovery purposes, you dont even need a bay as long as you have a power and IDE connector free.
 
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