T60 boot failure

[makin]

Machine: Lenovo T60 running XP Home. HD: Hitachi HTS541060G9SA00.

Preceding events: The day before the problem, I'd disassembled my machine to clean the fan [with great success: dropped the CPU temp. by 30 deg.]. After reassembly, it worked fine. The following day, I installed printer drivers for the Brother MFC-495CW. That demanded a restart, but my computer never booted (just a black screen after the BIOS loaded), and hasn't since.

I booted from the XP disk and ran MS's "recovery console" (essentially a DOS shell with limited access rights). The file system is still intact, and the few .txts I checked were uncorrupted. I ran the recovery console's fixboot and fixmbr to write a new volume boot record and master boot record, but this didn't help. Then I ran chkdsk /p and "one or more errors were found." So I ran it again with the /r option, which it claimed "completed successfully." Now chkdsk /p returns no errors.

But still it wouldn't boot. So I replaced the registry from a snapshot from the day preceding the crash. Still no dice.

Any ideas? I thought it was a hard-drive issue, but now that it passes its tests I'm not so sure. Could a bad driver installation corrupt the OS? and is that fixable?? Or is it more likely that my opening the machine damaged the HD? or maybe the mobo??

I realize a good next step is to slave the HD to another machine, but I don't have the relevant cables on hand. Any suggestions?

Also: if, when I boot from the XP disk, I choose to "setup Windows XP" rather than to go to the recovery console, the "repair" option is not available---so that's not an option.

UPDATE

I rewrote the boot.ini file using bootcfg. Now I can at least choose to load Windows in Safe Mode. That doesn't work either (of course), but it does let me see where the boot fails. And it's at this line:

muti(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\isapnp.sys

So I replaced isapnp.sys via the XP book disk, and for good measure the next file (thanks, google) in the sequence, too (can't remember what it's called). And yet still the machine won't boot, hanging at the line specified above.

JGM

[whopsii]

do you have another partition on it ?
if your mbr still workin why dont u try to install another windows os in the another partition. to test the HDD. you can also test your hardware issue using a linux live cd ,latest linux should be able to mount and read windows partition and activate t60 basic feature. get it by download the iso then burn it into a bootable cd. you can also request a free linux cd or a pay for the DVD is cheap though . good luck and welcome to the forum.

[richk]

When chkdsk gives errors, it means that data in one or more sectors is corrupted. When you then run with the "/r" option, it fixes the checksum, but it cannot restore the data. If it is starting in safe mode, start with the network stuff. You might try replacing mup.sys with one from the xp disk. If that doesn't work, you can disable the wireless and ethernet functions in the BIOS, one at a time, to get more info. You might need to reinstall the OS, but that is not the first choice.