Troubleshooting Installations Paper

Scenario 1: As a PC support technician for a small company, it is your job to support both the PCs and their users (employees). Ben, a coworker, comes to you with a computer problem. For some reason, Windows XP is not booting correctly on his computer, and Ben is worried, because he has many important data files in several locations on the hard drive. He does not know which files are located in what folders. Besides his concern of losing these files, Ben is also worried about losing his saved e-mail addresses, individual e-mails, and his Internet Explorer favorite links. You try everything you know to recover Ben's computer, but it is of no use. Ben's operating system is corrupted beyond repair.

Prepare a list of steps you would take to fix this problem, including the steps involved with reinstalling Windows XP and recovering all the data that Ben needs.

First of all, there is a tool in Windows XP called the data retrieval tool. With Windows XP data recovery, you will be able to recover permanently deleted data accurately and maintain secured storage of recovered data in the desired destination. You will also be able to recover documents, text files, images or videos (EzineArticles.com, 2010).

While your computer may appear to turn on properly, but Windows XP does not boot as it should, this mean you need to start a troubleshooting session that incorporates looking at the operating system, finding the trouble, and getting it fixed. The following steps will help to accomplish this task.

The first thing to do is use the Windows start-up disk. If you do not possess a known good start-up disk, you will need to copy files from a working XP system. This disk is handy because the problem could be caused from the startup record in the active partition or the files the operating system employs to start-up your system is corrupt. The files that will need to be copied are from the "C" root directory; (Boot.ini, NTLDR, and Ntdetect.com). With the start-up disk in the computer that is having the problems; enter (Control, Alt, Delete) so your computer will re-start. While you are booting with the Windows startup disk, the PC will avoid the active partition along with the boot files on the hard disk and it will try to start your system as usual.

In addition, attempt to reboot the operating system using the "Last Known Good Configuration" attribute. Using this attribute permits the cancellation of all modifications which produced the issues in the "CurrentControlSet" registry key, that classifies the hardware and driver settings and it restores all data in the "CurrentControlSet" registry key by means of a backup copy that was utilized the previous time your computer starts up. To do this, enter (Control, Alt, Delete) so your computer will re-start. Then on the monitor you will see "Please select the operating system to start",