Recovery Console and CHKDSK

[Doran]

One of my friend is using Dell desktop running with Windows XP Pro (Sp2). It is a year old computer which was working fine so far but from last week whenever he is starting the computer it boots for few seconds and suddenly shows a BlueScreen. We even tried booting in Safe Mode but the computer is just refusing to boot in any mode.

We tried many workarounds on this including PartitionMagic 8. After spending hours I finally mange to get the problem. It was because the partitions are not mounted properly. I tried searching web for solutions and found various sites saying to run CHKDSK in order to fix this. Now as system is not booting at all, I thought to run CHKDSK using recovery console command prompt. So I put the Disk but before we can get to the command Prompt it prompts for Admin Password but my friend is not aware of the password. He said he had not set any password. We even tried blank password but nothing works.

Can anyone please suggest me something on this? How can I run the CHKDSK now?

[Epstein]

There are two ways according to me that you can through. First, this is not the password that you use for login in to your user account. It is actually system administrator password that only Dell can tell you if you haven’t changed it before. And secondly, you can try out any Bootable CD like Ubuntu to crack the password.

[Tanvir]

I have been through exactly the same problem in past and in my case I used third party boot disk to enter the recovery console such as BartPE, Ultimate Boot Disk, Hiren's Boot Disk, etc. you can give it a try. For more help on this, click this page http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/