Boot-up failure with Presario C304NR: recovery discs and data recovery

[johnw47]

I have a Compaq Presario C304NR and am encountering the Blue Screen of Death in the middle of Windows boot-up.  I can access the Recovery program (using F11), but find that the only option I have involves the loss of all my data.  Unfortunately, I neither backed up the data nor created the necessary recovery discs before the boot failure.

Question 1: Partition Recovery vs. HP recovery discs?

Do the Recovery discs that I could order from HP provide an option that could prevent this data loss (even if only by copying it to removable media), or do they operate exactly as the Recovery program on the hard drive?

Question 2: Boot DVD to copy files?

Is there any way to boot up from a CD/DVD with a file manager program (or some such: I saw a hopeful mention about a download called Knoppix) and copy my data to another DVD (or flash drive)?  Would you have any suggestions about which option would be best, and where to find the download?  I'm using an e-Machine desktop with Windows 7 and a broadband Internet connection as my workshop.

In case some history and context would be helpful, here's some background:

The C304NR was bought in November 2006.  It has p/n RL177UA#ABA and the original XP Home OS.  I think i installed SP2 and SP3, but i'm not sure :(.  The laptop began misbehaving after i installed Norton 360.  It became so slow as to be unusable for the most part.  Eventually I started receiving an error message after Windows had fully loaded, about a corrupt file or checksum or something (I forget what and which).  I'm not sure how that affected Windows, since the computer was already crippled.  I unfortunately performed a “chkdsk /f” without first making recovery discs or backing up my data (i do know better, alas; i'm otherwise not inept with computers, and am capable of exploring, though i’m more of a DOS dinosaur), and now every boot-up fails, with Windows Safe mode getting as far as the command line "...part(1)\Windows\System32\Drivers\Mup.sys."  The error message is 0x00000024 (0x00190203, 0x82F86568, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000).

Thanks for your help!

[wes_notebooks · Accepted solution]

johnw47,

There is a lot of good information here regarding the mup.sys hang during startup:

http://www.aitechsolutions.net/mupdotsysXPhang.html or http://www.google.com/search?q=Mup.sys&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPa...=

Try booting to the BIOS  (F10) and run the Hard Drive Self Test.  Be sure you have only the ac adapter connected.  You can take the hard drive out pretty easily and put it into a hard drive enclosure usb kit.  This would allow you to copy paste or backup the data.

-wes

[johnw47]

Many thanks to wes for your reply.  The links you provided gave me access to the information i needed: run "chkdsk c: /r" (to fix and repair drive c:).  I also found a disc download that allowed me to create a bootable DVD that could run the chkdsk program: Windows Vista reinstall, from Microsoft (URL??).  i made use of uTorrent Stable ("mu-torrent," i suppose) to download the ISO image file needed (URL: http://www.utorrent.com/downloads), and of ImgBurn (URL: http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download) to create the bootable DVD.  With this DVD i was able to boot up the hanging Compaq, go to a DOS prompt and run "chkdsk /r".  This took quite a while to complete; perhaps about an hour.  Then when i booted up from the hard drive, Windows loaded successfully.  Important note (with thanks to those who gave me this heads-up): the boot in Safe Mode gave the impression it was unsuccessful, since the computer seemed to hang on the same command line "...Drivers\Mup.sys".  But i had been warned to wait it out patiently, which i did for what seemed more than a minute, and the program eventually moved on to load Windows, indicating that the BSOD obstacle had been removed.  (As an aside: in this state Windows Explorer did not allow me to copy or move any file.)  Then i restarted into the Recovery partition (using F11 on start-up).  This time, the Recovery program offered the option of preserving my data.  I followed that default option and did recover all my files.  Whew!  Then all that remained was to redo all the software updates i had lost, and install a different virus program (i chose Avast, which so far seems to allow the computer to operate normally).

Thanks for your help in solving this problem i created.

[darylre]

How do you run chk disc on windows 7 compaq presario c304nr? Please help, anybody!!