This's an happy-ending story, as for now (fingers crossed). I run a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 notebook, OS Win XP Media Center Edition. Win automatic updates have always been disabled for choice (I prefer to be aware about what's being installed on my system). For a long time I've run the machine with the suite Net.Framework 2.0. On Sunday Jan 12th I installed the Ver. 3.5, rebooted and all was OK. Later, A program I was installing in demo mode automatically launched the installation of Net.Framework 3.5 SP1. Rebooted and .... I got the black screen and the message: "NTLDR Missing - Press CTRL+ALT+CANC to restart". I tried to make XP to start from the recovery console, but, once the 'R' key was pressed, I got the message "No HD found".
I first tried to see if the my HD was readable as an external drive: I connected it to another XP machine and all of my stuff was still there.
I made a backup of all of the relevant stuff, then noticed that, in the C:\ directory, all of the boot files were missing (only the file 'pagefile.sys' was present).
Sometimes, the more the problem is complex, the simpliest is the solution ... Fortunately, years ago, I copied the whole content of my HD to an external drive, so the original boot files was there. With a simple copy/paste action, I threw all of those files into the C:\ directory of my system HD, mounted it into the notebook again and ..... voilà! The machine is running again just as if nothing was happened.
Nonetheless, despite I now have a working machine again, I haven't found the reason why all of my boot files have been (accicentally?) deleted, and I'd like to discover it in order to avoid such a bad behavior again.
Is it normal that a (corrupted?) XP Update installer may delete ALL of the boot files? Sounds incredible, but, as a matter of fact, those files went lost after I run the above mentioned installer.
A virus maybe? But I've scanned the restored machine with ComboFix and nothing was found.
Btw, it seems that the installation of the Net.Framework 3.5 SP1 has also been successful, since the machine is now running normally with such an update as well.
I first tried to see if the my HD was readable as an external drive: I connected it to another XP machine and all of my stuff was still there.
I made a backup of all of the relevant stuff, then noticed that, in the C:\ directory, all of the boot files were missing (only the file 'pagefile.sys' was present).
Sometimes, the more the problem is complex, the simpliest is the solution ... Fortunately, years ago, I copied the whole content of my HD to an external drive, so the original boot files was there. With a simple copy/paste action, I threw all of those files into the C:\ directory of my system HD, mounted it into the notebook again and ..... voilà! The machine is running again just as if nothing was happened.
Nonetheless, despite I now have a working machine again, I haven't found the reason why all of my boot files have been (accicentally?) deleted, and I'd like to discover it in order to avoid such a bad behavior again.
Is it normal that a (corrupted?) XP Update installer may delete ALL of the boot files? Sounds incredible, but, as a matter of fact, those files went lost after I run the above mentioned installer.
A virus maybe? But I've scanned the restored machine with ComboFix and nothing was found.
Btw, it seems that the installation of the Net.Framework 3.5 SP1 has also been successful, since the machine is now running normally with such an update as well.
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