recovery console seems to hang on XP Pro

[nutbag]

I'm trying to enter recovery console on XP Pro oem. The problem is the cd seems to hang while examining my hard drive. I let the cd run for over an hour and nothing happens, I don't get to the prompt. I'm wondering what the "normal" examination time for recovery console is. Is there anything I can do before I re-install? Has anyone had this problem? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Scarecrow Man]

You say OEM. This worries me.

However, installing the Recovery Console from an OEM restore disc may not always work as intended. If the OEM disc has been configured to provide third-party hardware drivers during the first stage of setup, those drivers may be enumerated by the Recovery Console boot loader, but not copied over by the RC installation system.

As a result, if you set up the Recovery Console locally, then try to boot it, you'll get an error indicating that some mass storage driver or other isn't present. You can work around this by copying the missing drivers by hand to the hidden \cmdcons directory (where the Recovery Console is launched from).

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/t...1209358,00.html

Have you recently upgraded your disk from FAT32 to NTFS?

Do you have a SCSI or RAID hard drive?

[nutbag]

I solved the problem. The solution is not to use recovery console. After googling I found I needed to enter set up and then go into repair mode. It worked but left me with update issues. Repair mode basiclly re-installs the OS and erases all previous updates. Windows will no longer update in the "new" state because somewhere along the line microsoft put out a buggy update, which ironically won't allow you to install @ 80 updates. So back to google to find that solution, which is a script found here http://windowssecrets.com/2007/09/27/03-St...vents-XP-repair. Hope this helps someone else.