Resolved Cannot remove Windows Recovery Console

Hi,

I'd be grateful for some help...

Recently, following a virus attack, I installed Windows Recovery Console. Now the virus has been removed, I want to remove WRC. I've followed the instructions on the Microsoft website (link below), but the WRC screen keeps appearing at start-up.

Any ideas?

See My System dropdown if system spec needed. Thanks.

Ant

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555032

 

Thanks. Would you qualify that?

I understand what WRC does. What can be achieved with WRC that cannot be achieved with a diskette boot? My file system is FAT32.

 

Thanks, Steve.

I've discovered that WRC can be put on a startup floppy or CD, so I might do that, but I take your point. Maybe I'll re-install it in future.

http://tips.vlaurie.com/2006/05/recovery-console-for-those-without-an-xp-disk/

I've gone over the MS instructions again. The cmdcons folder and the cmldr file are definitely gone. There's no longer a C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT... line in boot.ini.

I can't understand how the program can run if it's not there.

 

The MS instructions apply to XP professional, XP home is not mentioned. Probably very little difference but if you have followed the instructions without any mistakes then that is probably the reason why it has not worked. If it is causing an irritation at boot up you can alter the time for the boot options to display down to a couple of seconds. Don't make the timout so short that you cannot select the Recovery Console, you never know when you might need it.

Click Start and type msconfig then hit enter. Select the Boot.ini tab. Then you can change what you wish to boot as default and alter the timout.

 

Ant, it would be useful to know the contents of BOOT.INI, please cut and paste in your next post, if you're not sure how please follow these instructions (with admin rights)...

Please copy the code below and paste it into notepad

Code:

attrib -s -h \boot.ini
copy \boot.ini mybootini.txt
attrib +s +h \boot.ini
start mybootini.txt

Save this file on your desktop as getboot.cmd.

Doubleclick on getboot.cmd and a new file (mybootini.txt) will be created on your desktop and opened in notepad.

Please post the contents of this file in your next reply.

PS once done you can safely delete getboot.cmd and mybootini.txt from your desktop.

 

I may be wrong, I can check this on my VM
but if you install Recovery console, default setting is 30 seconds

If you install RC thru ComboFix, default setting is 2 sec

 

Thanks everyone for stopping to read the thread and for taking the time to post.

Yes, I'm on XP Home rather than Professional. wildfire, My boot.ini is as follows.

[boot loader]
timeout=2
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
UnsupportedDebug= "do not select this" /debug
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

 

I've just done some learning...

What I'm seeing at startup is not WRC but the boot selection menu. It seems I had successfully deleted WRC, but my PC's boot loader was still displaying the boot menu that had previously housed WRC.

It looks as though there are (at least) two ways of preventing the boot menu from appearing: I can set the timeout value in boot.ini to 0 or I can remove all boot options except for the default (i.e. Windows O/S.)

The latter involves removing the UnsupportedDebug= "do not select this" /debug line from the boot options. Should I keep it?

Thanks again.

 

That entry was most likely set by ComboFix
If you have removed the file/folder of WRC and the other line in boot.ini
You should be able to safely remove that line and leave no space
UnsupportedDebug= "do not select this" /debug

So that it now reads
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


NOTE: I changed timeout from 2 to 30 as 30 is default, your option to change it too

 

That's very helpful, indmusic. I'll do that.

It's worth noting, with hindsight, that I could have kept Windows Recovery Console and simply set timeout to 0.

Thanks again to all who advised, particularly wildfire for putting me on to boot.ini.