Little Known Ways to Repair Windows

Or Blogging by the Skin of My Teeth:

Have you ever had one of those days? Weeks? Months or years perhaps? Or maybe even decades?

In my case the past month or so has been a little crazy. If you have been reading me regularly you will know that I’ve had my share of personal struggles.

1. I recently had an operation;
2. My car was stolen and torched;
3. I also had a minor stroke not long ago.

Well it seems that life still has more curves to throw at me. Yesterday my computer screen just blanked out, and when I tried to reboot Windows XP refused to budge. It just left a terse message saying that an important system file was missing.

I booted into my second backup hard drive to check it out and lo and behold the file was indeed still there. So my next assumption was somehow the file must have corrupted itself.

Here is what I did to fix it:

From my other hard drive I googled around and found lots of complicated methods but none of them suited my particular case. I suspected that the integrity of my copy of Windows just wasn’t up to snuff so I opted to just repair it.

Some of you might not be aware of Windows XP’s ability to repair itself and it has saved my a__ more than once. Some purists out there recommend that you must format and reinstall Windows all over again, but when you have a gagillian, bazillian software programs like I do that is not a prospect I take lightly.

Here is how you can repair Windows XP:

One quick method is to use the System File Checker tool to scan all of the protected files on your computer:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the box type sfc /scannow (or just copy and paste). Please note that you will probably be prompted for the Windows XP disk or Service Pack installation media. It will replace any windows files that have been corrupted or copied over.

But in my case I couldn’t even boot into Windows so that wasn’t an option available for me. I had to do a complete repair of Windows and the only way I could do that was to boot off my Windows XP installation disk. (Note that you might have to set your BIOS to be able to boot from a CD).

I already know how to do this having done it several times in the past, (but rather than reinvent the wheel and explain it all to you) the Elder Geek has an excellent tutorial on this. He describes in great detail most of the known methods for repairing Windows.

The method that I used is under the title: Windows Installation CD - Repair Current Installation. The Elder Geek is an excellent resource btw, and you might also want to bookmark him while you’re there.

After repairing Windows I remembered that Microsoft has ceased supporting Service Pack 1. So I had no choice but to install Service Pack 2.

Now some of you will probably say, why on earth Bloke have you not put Service Pack 2 on before? Well, I heard so many horror stories about it that I thought I would wait until they got it right (Microsoft is notorious for buggy software.) Nevertheless, by no longer supporting Service Pack 1 Microsoft had already made the decision for me.

But the good news is so far I am very happy with Service Pack 2 (knock on wood). My ‘puter is running rock solid, and another benefit is that I’ve gained a lot of hard drive space.

You see, when you repair Windows XP it strips out all of the service packs and patches you acquired along the way, and puts Windows back to the way it originally came from the womb. So when I installed Service Pack 2 I no longer needed all those dumb SP1 patches and I’ve reclaimed a lot of hard drive space.

SWEET! Don’t you feel empowered? Now back to blogging.

Filed under: windows xp, windows repair, blog, blogging instabloke, tutorial, webtech, software, microsoft

Similar Reading: A Crash Course in Computer Repair and Maintenance