Laptop will not boot - autochk.exe file

[meddyuk]

Hi team,

I wondered if you could help me. I was happily downloading some files and then the laptop turned itself off. I went to reboot and it came up with a blue screen and an error which state

"autochk.exe file cannot be found or is corrup, skipping autochk."

Now i've investigated the problem for hours and have tried most stuff, but still it wont work. I haven't got the original windows xp disc, i've only got the recovery disc.

Now i've booted up in safe mode and then selected recovery console.

I've managed to located the autochk.exe file which is indeed located in c:\windows\system32.

There was something mentioned on another site to rename this file as autochk.exe.bak and reboot - this doesn't work

I went on YouTube and followed instructions to restore from the command prompt by typing

C:\system~1\restore~1 or something along those lines, anyway that doesnt work.

I've managed to located the restore folder which is located in C:\windows\system\Restore in there there is the file rstrui.exe, but i noticed that there are no restore points.

I have already located the Got an I386 folder on the hard drive and on the recovery disc and copied the autochk.exe file into the system32 folder but to no avail.

Has anyone got any other ideas on how to get my laptop up and runningagain? I'm off abroad in 2 weeks and need the laptop for then.

[Lee]

boot into safe mode
run CHKDSK /F

if that doesn't work

boot into safe mode
run regedit
edit the Registry navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\SessionManager in the Registry and look for a REG_MULTI_SZ value with the name BootExecute. Set the value of BootExecute to a null value (i.e. delete the value so it is empty). This will prevent AUTOCHK from running on next reboot

[meddyuk]

I can't get to Safe Mode with Command prompt. If i select it, it runs through various script such as multi(0)disk drivers etc then trys to boot up again to the windows xp screen and then does the same thing again.

The only command prompt screen i can get to is through the windows recovery console on start up, this will only let me do chkdsk r and p.

There are 3 options when i go to f8 and select safe mode/safe mode with networking or safe mode with command prompt these are

Microsoft Windows Recovery console
do not select this [debugger enabled]
Microsoft windows xp home edition

if i select the latter, then it just loops.

Ive even tried to run fixboot and then boot up with last known good config but that doesnt work either.

[system7]

I'm never very interested in fiddling around with broken Windows XP beyond some Recovery Console fixes that need a full XP disk. In fact a full XP disk can do a repair install that preserves data too. You may be able to borrow one and use it with your 25 digit COA number. :)

You may have a reinstall option on your recovery disk that preserves files. Naturally you set CD to boot before HD for this.

You might install Ubuntu on a shrunken partition, then transfer files to it or to an external device. It is useful to know how full the HD was with XP if you want to set a manual partition size for Ubuntu, but Ubuntu will guess anyway. You can usually just boot a Ubuntu CD too, and do something with files on an XP partition.