Repairing A XP Installation: Major Discrepancies ...discrepancies?

[Grafitti 0]

I had to repair the windows installation on a computer, due to constant power cuts for several days, once it started up and said "NTRDL is missing" etc. so i looked on all the tech sites for ideas on how to fix it, and tried them all. none of them worked. i couldn't fix the boot.ini or winnt files, because they weren't messed up, simply not there. so i tried to copy them again off the windows cd, but after telling me the file was successfully copied, i would look in the c drive and it wasn't there. Next i tried a repair install, but it wouldn't give me that option. What i don't understand is, why will windows, on installation, detect an already installed copy on the hard disk, but not give me an option to repair it? i tried several times, and finally after using the recovery console to fix the MBR, the boot, and then finally rebuilding the boot file, it then gave me the option of repairing rather than doing a full install. I'm not quite sure what it was that did the trick. But i would like to know because it happens frequently. What is a simple, generally tried and proven way to get the repair option to come up if it refuses to?

[wutske 0]

wow, never had that problem before, it always gave me a recovery option if windows was installed.I would suggest you to get at least a BartPE cd so you can easily recover and repair files on your hdd if windows refuses to boot, it has been useful before to me.I think the reason why the cd did not give a repair option was because it simply did not find a windows installation (because the NTLDR was corrupted).

[DjCalvin 0]

It was the MBR.
Your boot record was currupt and you did the right steps.
This happend to my home machine a couple months ago.

fixmbr, then create a new boot.ini

I had to repair the windows installation on a computer, due to constant power cuts for several days, once it started up and said "NTRDL is missing" etc. so i looked on all the tech sites for ideas on how to fix it, and tried them all. none of them worked. i couldn't fix the boot.ini or winnt files, because they weren't messed up, simply not there. so i tried to copy them again off the windows cd, but after telling me the file was successfully copied, i would look in the c drive and it wasn't there. Next i tried a repair install, but it wouldn't give me that option. What i don't understand is, why will windows, on installation, detect an already installed copy on the hard disk, but not give me an option to repair it? i tried several times, and finally after using the recovery console to fix the MBR, the boot, and then finally rebuilding the boot file, it then gave me the option of repairing rather than doing a full install. I'm not quite sure what it was that did the trick. But i would like to know because it happens frequently. What is a simple, generally tried and proven way to get the repair option to come up if it refuses to?