Repairing windows help ...

[FlameCity]

I have a computer that got a bit of a jolt during the power outages earlier this week and now windows (xp) will not boot ... Just goes in an endless loop of restarting without actually booting up ... Will not even go into safe mode. So I think the next step would be to boot using the cd and run a windows repair but I'm unsure ... Will my files be safe if I do this? I have some emails I really don't want to obliterate ... Any advise?

Oh and is there any way to backup files before running the repair ... Hasn't been done in a few months ... A lessen I must relearn over and over ...

[rbochan]

clicky clicky

[FlameCity]

Thanks rbochan! Sadly once I get to screen 7 there is no option for repair, it doesn't even show the windows XP installation, just

C: Partition1 [unknown] 476930 MB <476929 MB free>
Unpartitioned space 8 MB

Options at the bottom are ENTER=Install. D=Delete Partition. F3=Quit

[rbochan]

From the CD repair console, try Fixmbr [device_name]

Where [device_name] is the device pathname of the drive to which you want to write a new master boot record. For example, the device pathname format for a standard bootable drive C configuration would look like this:

DeviceHardDisk0

Either that or try Fixboot [drive]:

Where [drive] is the letter of the drive to which you want to write a new partition boot sector.

If any of that's successful, I'd try to run chkdsk from the CD on that partition if you can.