This post is to help a chap who pc'd me; I put it here in full to aid others.
Nouveaunoise "hello there my name is conor i am from ireland and i have a problem with my comp. basically im an idiot and did something i knew i shouldnt have done but due to frustration i did it anyway.
basically i had bad malware + b.exe and all sorts of problems which i was unable to resolve.
this all crippled my os and would not allow me to delete any of it. it crippled my system restore (group administrator block bullshit) it also wouldnt allow me to enter safe mode (blue screen shut down), so me being an idiot i did the msconfig safeboot! BOLLOX why did i do that i shouldn have done that. u know what happened from there as you posted on this very matter a few years ago.
i had no xp cd so i made a usb bootable recovery console http://tuts4tech.net/2009/07/14/crea...overy-console/ which worked fine. the problem im having is when i enter bootcfg the options come up. but when i prompt one of them i cant access anything. example bootcfg /list = there are currently no boot entries available to display.
bootcfg /rebuild = error: failed to successfully scan disks for windows instalations. this error may be caused by corrupt file system. so i do the chkdsk the volume appears to be in good condition the thing that gets me is the size 1957600kilobytes. (i know im really stretching this out so for that i am sorry) basically the usb is 2gig so it is obviously reading that and thats why it wont let me into the bootcfg to edit the safeboot switch."
Hello, Conor... a bit of bad luck there. Windows is chokka with traps for the unwary, and most of us are that at first.
Okay, running an RC from a USB stick. First off, it is a bit of a worry that when RC was starting it did not suggest your Windows installation to log into [ie. you are in the RC, but it uses C:\WINDOWS as the prompt if it found an installation, or C:\ if it did not].
bootcfg /scan will hunt through all your drives for a Windows. If it reports a drive error then you are most likely using Sata drives with either RAID or AHCI configuration without the correct driver loaded. So restart your RC, but this time use the F6 key to load the corrrect Sata driver. It will be on a floppy...
No floppy with the Sata driver? Then go into BIOS and edit temporarily your Sata Configuration to IDE emulation. Either way, the RC should now find your Windows installation.
But you cannot use the other bootcfg commands to build a boot.ini, because your RC is running from a USB stick. In any boot.ini that you build or add an entry to, rdisk() will be set to rdisk(1). And if your Windows is on rdisk(0) as most are, it just won't work. And you cannot edit the boot.ini in-place with RC. Neat, huh?
What you can do, though, is get a copy of your boot.ini :
First, you must find what drive letters the RC has allocated. To do that, use the command...
MAP - you should be able to recognise your stick letter. If a Windows was found, it will be C:, if not then your stick RC will be C:
Lets say your stick is E: Then this will give you a copy of your file...
COPY c:\boot.ini E:\realboot.ini
Or you can scribble it down if it won't copy....
TYPE c:\boot.ini
Right. Back to your working sys with that stick, edit that realboot.ini file [or make one with notepad from your scribble] so that you delete the parameter "/SAFEBOOT....." from the line on which it appears.
Save it to your USB stick as realboot.ini
It may look something like this...
[boot loader]
timeout=4
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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Restart the failed sys with the RC USB stick [and use F6 floppy if Sata and you did not emulate IDE ]. Now...
COPY e:\realboot.ini c:\boot.ini
EXIT, and it ought to boot normally. Edit the BIOS entry back to AHCI or RAID if you changed it.
Of course, you know now that malware has busted your Safeboot key in registry, don't you? So that needs fixing.... post if you need help on that.