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Troubleshoot Win XP 

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

People often face problems while working on Win XP but don’t know how to solve them. This article will talk about the lesser-known ways to eradicate those regular problems.Lets discuss them one by one: 

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Missing NTLDR or NTDETECT.COM 



Many users panic when faced with this error as they think they have lost their data. Well, there is nothing to worry. This usually occurs when you have not shutdown the OS properly. To solve this problem, boot your system with Win 98 bootable.

Then take a Win XP installer CD and copy NTLDR and NTDETECT from (\i386 folder) to C:\. If you have NTFS partition, boot the system from the Win XP CD. From the installer press R to repair. The installer will show a list of all Windows install path. Choose the correct installed path. When asked for the username and password, enter administrator as the user name and your password. Then you will get a command prompt where you need to give the following commands:

Copy d:\i386\NTLDR c:\



Copy d:\i386\NTDETECT.COM c:\ 


(d: will be replaced by the actual drive letter)

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Edit the registry to increase the folder cache

HALL.DLL missing or corrupted 



To solve this, boot your machine with Win XP installer and follow the same steps as mentioned in the above problem. When you get the command prompt, type-in bootcfg /list to show the entries in boot.ini and then give the command bootcfg /rebuild to repair.

Increasing the folder cache 



By default the folder cache is set to 400 folders in Win XP. You can increase it by doing the following. Click on Start>Run and type Regedit. Then from the left window panel select HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\ShellNoRoam. On the right window panel, select BagMRU and change the value in hex according to your requirements.

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Cache size Hex value



1000 3e8


2000 7d0


3000 bb8


4000 fa0


5000 1388


After changing the values, reboot the system to see if the changes have been carried out.








Disabling Passport Pop-up



Win XP will prompt every now and then that you need a passport to use Internet communication. This can become very irritating. To avoid this, you need to change the registry setting. Click on Start>Run and type Regedit. From the left window panel, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\MessengerService. Then from the right window panel, double click on PassportBalloon and set its value to 0A 0A 00 00 00. Close regedit and reboot to see the changes.

Clearing virtual memory



Virtual memory in Windows creates a memory space on a local disk. If any application requires more RAM, then Windows manages it from the virtual memory. Sometimes, page files (virtual memory pages) remain there if the application is shutdown abnormally.

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This becomes problematic if you have lower capacity drive. You can configure the virtual memory in such a way that whenever the user shutdowns Win XP, all the page files will be deleted.

Edit registry settings to disable the Passport pop up

For this, go to Start>Setting> control panel>Administrative task >Local Security Policy. This will bring an MS Management Console before you. From the left Window panel select Local Policies>Security Options. On the right Window panel, you will find the list of security policies. Scroll down and double click Shutdown:Clear Virtual Memory Page file policy. A small window will pop up. Here, set the policy to Enable and click OK button. Lastly, restart the machine to check out the changes. 

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Corrupt or Missing \Windows\System32\config



You sometimes get an error that your system could not be started because some files, such as \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE or \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ CONFIG\SYSTEM, were missing or corrupted. This is a common problem faced when any device driver or a software component gets corrupted. To solve this, boot the system with Win XP bootable installer and follow the same steps as in the first problem. Now, give the following commands at the command prompt: For \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE error, type the commands






cd \Windows\system32\config


ren software software.bad


copy \Windows\repair\software


For \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ CONFIG\SYSTEM error, type the commands

cd \Windows\system32\config



ren system system.bad


copy \Windows\repair\system

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Then exit from the Win XP installer CD. 

Hope these few tips will help you to trouble shoot your Win XP.

Sanjay Majumder

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