You might have a healthy computer that works so well, but suddenly one day, you can’t boot it. Windows system files corrupted, for example.
The next step you would do is to put the Windows CD and boot it up, and try to repair Windows. But sometimes, it doesn’t give you the option of repairing it. It might not be able to identify your existing Windows installation.
To continue fixing the problem, there are a few options. You can either take the hard disk out of the computer case, use a USB-IDE (or USB-SATA) cable and connect to another computer to extract the files, or to boot it up in an operating system to perform file transfer.
There are lots of this kind of tools available on the internet. I personally found this method the easiest, and would like to introduce to my readers.
Preparation – you must have the following items handy:
1. A USB drive of at least 256MB of size
2. A Windows XP installation disk
3. Download BartPE
4. Download Windows Server 2003 SP1
Step 1 – build the BartPE files using PE Builder
Make sure the Windows XP installation disk is in your optical drive. Turn on PE Builder and search for the source. After the search, make sure no media output is selected, and click on “Build”. It takes a while depending on the speed of your computer, but it won’t be long. Please see screenshot below:
(If you want to boot using a CD, then select “Burn to CD/DVD” instead.)
Step 2 – Get all the files ready
Open a new folder named “srsp1″ under the PE Builder installation directory. Download Windows Server 2003 SP1. It is an exe file. Extract it using WinRar. DO NOT install.
After extracting the file, copy the file “setupldr.bin” to the “srsp1″ folder. Then expand the file “randisk.sy_” in command prompt with this command
expand -r c:\server2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ <pebuilder>\srsp1
(where <pebuilder> is the PE Builder’s installation directory, and assuming the SP1 file is extracted under the folder C:\server2003sp1)
To save you the hassle, you can download my prepared files here. Just extract this into a folder named “srsp1″ and put it in the installation directory.
Step 3 – Build the files into the USB drive
Use command prompt to run the following line:
pe2usb -f g:
where g: is the drive letter of the USB drive. Please note this would FORMAT the USB drive, so make sure there is no wanted files in the USB drive.
Again this would take a while to copy all files into the drive.
When this is done, unplug the USB drive and plug this into the computer needed to be fixed. You may need to go to BIOS to adjust the boot sequence and make sure the computer can boot with the USB drive. If all goes well a graphical interface similar to Windows XP would be presented, where you can access all your files in the hard disk.
I have tested this and found that it works on IDE/SATA hard disks and IDE/SATA optical drives.
PS. Sorry for not updating this blog for a long time. I have just migrated to another country, and it took me quite a while to get my internet connection (and other things) sorted.
