XP Hard Drive Problem

A friend has XP and I'm trying to help with a problem. They are unable to boot in any mode (safe, normal, command, etc). When attempting to boot with in windows, a blue screen flashes up so quick you can't see it. When booting with a command prompt I got some cryptic partition errors. Using the 6 "boot disks ", I was able to get to the recovery console where it would let me do a chkdsk /p - it identified errors, however never really seemed to fix them. It's important to note that the first time at a c: prompt, it said something like it "could not define the directory structure ", however after the chkdsk, I could at least list the directory. XP doesn't seem to have a dos based scandisk and no executables (like norton ndd.exe) will run. Their computer had the software pre-installed and they don't have original disks. Right now they are dead in the water. . . while on it attempts to boot over and over. What is the right choice to get this thing up and running again?

thanks....Terri

 

It may or may not be possible to rehab the machine but you were on the right track.

Try the recovery console again and do
chkdsk /r
fixboot c:

If still no joy, back to the recovery console and try
fixmbr