Great to hear it helpedBeen using it since the early days of XP and a variation of it for WindowsME/2000 with the exception of O&O. O&O can not be run on XPSP1 without causing trouble so before that I was using a non-public defrag tool which had it's limits and did not address the MFT correctly like most defrag tools still don't today, so, I was very pleased with O&O hit the market and SP2 was released. Good Luck!

Nick,Is this applicable to VISTA 32? If not what do you recommend to achieve this tweak.RegardsSanal

>Nick,>>Is this applicable to VISTA 32? If not what do you recommend>to achieve this tweak.>Regards>SanalNo, unfortunately Vista takes over a partition in such a way it does not allow the defrag to do the same job. There are elements of what I posted that can be applied to Vista but I iwll warn right now that if you do not know what you are doing, do not do it.I have been working on a Vista list and I will post it but it will probably be a while yet. With the release of SP1 for Vista what was developed prior can have a bad influence. Before I post lists like this I make sure what is posted is good to use. I dont want people having problems, I want their problems fixed.I would strongly advise you not use that list for Vista.

If there was a "thread of the year", this one would, for sure, be the winner. Thank you, Nick for sharing your time, tips, tricks & expertise.Mods, turning this thread into a sticky would be very helpful for many.Jean-Paul

>If there was a "thread of the year", this one would, for>sure, be the winner. Thank you, Nick for sharing your time,>tips, tricks & expertise.Thanks Jean-Paul and happy simming!

Dr. Nick,I am in big trouble now. I am a complete fan of the GEX and FEX products which had combined to make my 3 year old P4 finally work OK with FSX/SP2. I was even able to use UTX, which prior to GEX was just too much of a burden for my rig.Anyway, encouraged by the glowing responses from folks who have followed your perscription for tuning up Windows XP/SP2 and the storage system I through caution to the wind an plunged into following you fairly detailed and thorough instructions posted earlier in this, or a related, forum thread. All was going as plannned, and I had completed all of the steps up through the offline defrag (using O&O 8.5) successfully. The next step was the reboot and invoking a COMPLETE/NAME defrag; this completed in about 40 minutes. But upon rebooting, following the normal Dell BIOS and the 2nd BIOS for my Promise SATA 2 drive RAID 0 array, I get an error message (from ?) stating "NTLDR is missing" "press CTRL-ALT-D to restart". It appears as though the NAME oriented defrag has moved something vital away from the expected (fixed?) location. I know this is very, very bad. But before I tried anything too radical I want to check with more knowledgeable folks to see if there is any way to salvage this tragedy.My rig is a Dell 8300/P4/3MHz with 2GB and XP/SP2, Promise SATA RAID SATA controller with 2 120GB drives combined into one 240GB array. I am using the Dell A07 BIOS.Let me know if there is any way to salvage this situation; otherwise the impact is devastating years of FS9 and FSX tuning, dozens of add ons, all my saved email copies and business records.Here is hoping,ToddChester Springs, PA

ToddDid you read my initial warning about DELL's and the use of the defrag software?Usually this is caused by DELL's older Windows install disk and/or missing elements of XPSP2 in whats known as LBA Support. The DELL Windows install disk may have only SP1 and older files that do not register correctly even if you instal SP2 from the web or from local, after WX SP1 has been installed. I have also seen it happen on RARE occasions with an older DELL Windows disk with SP2 incorporated into the disk. The issue mostly effects older DELL system and not more modern ones because DELL upgraded their XP install disks. The second way that can happen is if the hard drive has a bad sector on it and moved a critical system file to that sector which not can not be read. That issue and the "NTLDR is missing" "press CTRL-ALT-D to restart" is seen with more than just defrag software and can also be caused by partition software due to a bad sector. Unfortunately there may not be a recovery however, please do try this...1. Start your computer by using the Windows XP CD-ROM, just like you are going to install Windows.. 2. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press R to repair. 3. Press C to start the Recovery Console.You may be asked to log in as you would in Windows with the admin password, if you do not have one just leave it blank and hit ENTER. It will ask you what install you wish to log into, select the one that appears.4.Once at the DOS prompt, please type the following (assuming your windows install is on the C Drive)CHKDSK /R That scan may take quite a while to complete. Once finished, try booting.NEXT.. if that does not work, please try the following:1. Start your computer by using the Windows XP CD-ROM. 2. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press R to repair. 3. Press C to start the Recovery Console. 4. Copy the Ntldr file from the Windows XP CD-ROM to the root of your system partition by using the following commands, pressing ENTER after each command:a. Type: cd .. to go to the root of drive C.Note that there is a space between the d and the two periods (..). b. Type: the letter of the CD-ROM drive. c. Type: cd i386. d. Type: Copy ntldr c:. e. Type: Copy ntdetect.com c:. f. Type: Bootcfg /add. The bootcfg /add command scans the computer Windows XP (if it is dual booting) installations, and then displays the results. From this location, you can add an installation to the Boot menu.You may receive a message that is similar to the following message: Scanning all disks for Windows InstallationsPlease wait, since this may take a while...Total Identified Windows Installs: 1[1] C:WindowsSelect installation to add: (select a number)Enter Load Identifier: WindowsXPEnter Operating System Load Options: (that is: /fastdetect)This process adds a new entry in the Boot menu. When you add an installation, the bootcfg command also makes the installation the default operating system boot entry.g. Type: Exit. See if it boots. If not, reenter the REPAIR CONSOLE and type the following:Hit enter after eash entryATTRIB

Nick,Thanks for responding so quickly. Whatever ultimately happens I do appreciate your help very much. I did see your caveat, but went ahead because the feedback had been very positive and no one had reported a problem with your well documented procedure. I thought Dell PCs are very common so someone would have already been tripped-up by now and reported it to the forum. Oh well, it looks like I got caught holding the short straw this time.Your diagnosis, and some of your remedies, agree with the Dell folks FAQ concerning repairing a missing NTLDR. I have already attempted their procedure which is similar to your second set of instructions following "NEXT...". I also had to load a floppy disk containing the driver for the RAID array and had to hit F6 to get it to load. Unfortunately the recoveery console copy ntldr procedure failed with a "The file could not be copied" message. Anyway, it looks like you have a few other ideas for me to tryout and I will give them a try.I will let you know how it goes.Thanks,ToddP.S. The MAP command from the Recovery Console shows a mystery drive in addition to the C: drive array. I get:? FAT16 39MB DeviceHarddisk0Partition 1c: 226934MB DeviceHarddisk0Partition 2I tried copying the NTLDR file to C: and got the noted error msg.

CorrectThat is the hidden Dell recovery/maintenance partition which can be used in emergencies to reinstall/repair Windows from a series of keystrokes at boot. How that works is different for the models and I would not know how to instruct you correctly. Perhaps the Dell site has the information. Also, that type of recovery may not restore support for software installed, and, it may not work at all if the files it uses are corrupt or were removed by the user at some point.I do know that hidden partition on some of the past Dell systems was only for maintenance and could not be used for recovery. It really depends on the model and the install disk they provide.If you have another system you can transfer the drive to, you may be able to access the drive as any other storage drive and at that point copy the data you do not wish to lose, like the entire MSFS folder, to another location, the reinstall Windows clean and start over without losing the MSFS folder and its installed contents. Installed MSFS 3rd party software which require registration will need to be re-installed but the majority of what you have can most likely be saved.Side note.. if you were to completely wipe the disk with a ZERO fill which gets rid of the Dell partition, and then replace the Windows install disk, insuring you have a modern WindowsXP disk with SP2 already on it, you could then use the process/defrag as outlined with no problems.If push really comes to shove, you could do a REPAIR WINDOWS install which again may remove support for installed software but it may allow you to get in to recover and backup before a wipe.. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/h...ips/doug92.mspxMichael Stevenstech (MVP) also did a write-up on that process in which he gets a bit more in-depth about what to watch out for when doing this type of repair.. Please read the 2nd section XP Repair install http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htmAgain, I am very sorry the "Dell from H-ell" issue (name we called it years ago) has bitten you. I would never want anyone to have such problems. If anything else comes up or you have a question, please ask.. I would like to help as much as I can.

For what it's worth, I tried Nick's setup on my system with Windows XP SP3 (latest release candidate) installed. Thumbs up! No problems and a useful improvement in smoothness and loading time. And this with a pretty well optimised system to start with.I noticed quite a few of Nick's recommendations were the same (some certainly are not!) as those I heard from FS-GS when I had my system optimised for FS9 some years ago. If you are not confident to do this kind of thing yourself, maybe that's an alternative. http://www.fs-gs.com/Anyway, thanks very much to Nick for sharing his expertise!Cheers,Noel.

Glad you found it useful Noel :)But I do want to make sure everyone understands.. what I posted is not anything like an FS-GS service.They are the same tweaks you find on the net that have been around since Xp was released, and at Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308417/en-us in that developed a list that targets optimizing in a chain that has dependencies all the way up to the specified setup and use of the defrag, which the list relies the most on to finish/accomplish the goal.Some tweaks are very universal and are used in many different places by network admins. The approach and method are completely different than FS-GS so if there is any suggestion of similarity going on in anyone

Nick,As you expected my reinstallation disks from Dell are 3 year old SP1a versions and many of the system files differ in size and date from the updated SP2 installation on my now problematic system. Not much I can do except perhaps copy over individual files from another PC I have that uses SP2. You may be wondering how I got around the stone-cold no NTLDR impasse; by following your suggested recovery of course. But it did not go quite the expected way.Picking up where I left off: Since the attempt to copy the missing NTLDR did not work I next tried the CHKDSK /R thing. As an aside, I had already performed the offline/at_startup Windows CHKDSK (with fix check-box on) as part of your original tuneup plan and got a clean, no-error, outcome. Anyway, the CHKDSK invoked from the recovery console paused a few times at ~25% point, and then just sort of stopped at the 50% point. I waited 90 minutes and it was still locked at 50% so I stopped and rebooted. Unexpectdly, the original missing NTLDR issue was now gone and the booting of Windows from the C drive proceeded until it reported "Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt....system32hal.dll ... please re-install a copy of the above".I then tried to boot to the repair CD-ROM and was greeted with the invitation to select <1> C:Windows for logon. This worked and I can now access the C drive with all of the usual commands that the recovery console provides. I browsed around directories and all of the "stuff" on the RAID array C: drive "appears" to be intact. I tried the MAP command again and was surprised that the mysterious Dell FAT16 49MB drive was now gone; it now just shows a slightly larger (by 49MB, I bet) C drive, plus opticals D and E. CHKDSK still will not run to completion though, and attempting to boot from C: yields the corrupt HAL.DLL message.Do you think copying over hal.dll from another XP/SP2 machine (say, via the floppy drive) has a chance? Or is the C drive somehow hosed with multiple errors that will lead to a succession of boot failures for one reason or another.At least I can now access the C drive to S...L..O..W..L..Y back up critical business records to floppy. I am planning on a short pause to try and salvage some key files before continuing with the recovery efforts.Again, any further thoughts and suggestions will be appreciated.Todd

Hi ToddOk, you have reached the point that tells me the LBA issue has in fact damaged the MFT and several other files to the point of no return. Because of the original SP1a Dell disk and the fact that the SP2 installer applied to that does not completely change the system files required for "correct" and "full" LBA support, there is no way to recover and be able to run properly that I can think of, besides the possibility of getting a true "SP2" Windows install disk and trying the "Repair Install" I posted above. Once the HAL has been reported as damaged, its really a done deal unless you can recover the original HAL from your install. The HAL is a file created and written during the WinXP install based on your hardware and is also upgraded 'somewhat" during a SP2 upgrade... that is also part of the issue.. the HAL is not

Nick,I follow everything you said and suggest, and things are looking somewhat grim. However, I found the Dell tech support archive has a procedure for resolving a missing or corrupt HAL.DLL file. Since I can now boot off the CD to bring up the recovery console they suggest going to C: and then using bootcfg /rebuild, then add installation to bootlist, then entering the load identifier as "Windows XP Home Edition" followed by /NoExecute=Optln /fastdetect and then a reboot after the C: prompt returns. Dell claims this will force a custom rebuild the corrupted HAL.DLL file.I guess this is worth a try. Is there any danger in further attempts to get CHKDSK /R to run to completion, or is the possible harm worse than the potential gain?Thanks again for your help, and I understand that we probably need to wrap up this thread soon.Todd

Replacing the HAL from the disk is not going to recover you completely even if it works.. it may allow you back into Windows (possible, but I don