Help with setting permissions

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nickpapa

New Member
so my bosses brother gave me his desktop because he was getting an error booting into XP saying "isapnp.sys" is either missing or corrupt. i went into the recovery console and tried to copy the file over to the folder and it is telling me access is denied?

i then booted up with ubuntu and tried to copy the file into the drivers folder and im getting an error again that i do not have permission to copy to that folder.

anyone have an idea on what i could do to copy this file over?
 
First of all at the recovery console you don't copy anything but use the expand command that will extract any system designated in the command itself from the archived cab files found in the I386 folder. That would be something like "expand {optical drive letter}I386\[file name] C:\Windows\system32". The solution for that particular error message seen in XP also requires renaming the actual file found in the system32 directory first. Read the following here.

Solution:
Start the Recovery Console. If the ISAPNP.SYS file is still in your C:\Windows\System32\DRIVERS folder, the driver is corrupt. Rename the existing file and copy a new version from your WinXP installation CD. If the file is missing, then all you need to do is copy the file from your WinXP CD to the C:\Windows\System32\dRIVERS folder by typing the expand command: expand [CD drive letter]:\i386\isapnp.sy_ C:\win dows\system32\drivers\isapnp.sys.
http://www.smartcomputing.com/techsupport/detail.aspx?guid=&ErrorID=21787
 
Thanks PC eye. I did actually use the expand command the first time i tried, but received another error message which was along the lines of file does not exist or cannot be retrieved, i cant remember. I know the file is definitely on the xp cd as i searched for it from another pc
 
You first have to locate the original file and most likely right click on it while in Windows while having the drive slaved on the other machine in order to rename the file. That also means the hassles of moving from system to system and back for the one task there.

If you could get into Windows on that machine you could take ownership of the file according to the information seen at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421 That would allow you to rename the file and then boot to the recovery console for the expansion of a fresh copy with the previous instructions.

Another thought if you have the recovery or installation disk would be to have that in the optical drive and run the system file checker utility to see if that will replace the file. You simply type "sfc /scannow" at the Run prompt's command line there and press enter for the system utility to verify and replace anything found damaged or missing.

If all still fails the last step to see the system fully restored would be a repair install. A great article on this can be looked over at http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

One other thing for the non destructive method outlined there would be trying a manual startup of the system restore feature. That will require being able to get into the Windows F8 boot menu however. You would then choose the dafe mode /command prompt only option and type
%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe in at the prompt there to start this up. Hopefully there would be a restore point available prior to when the problem came up.
 
"Another thought if you have the recovery or installation disk would be to have that in the optical drive and run the system file checker utility to see if that will replace the file. You simply type "sfc /scannow" at the Run prompt's command line there and press enter for the system utility to verify and replace anything found damaged or missing."

do i need to be booted up into windows to do this? can i run this from the recovery console command line? the pc wont boot into windows at all. i cant get passed that error about the missing isapnp.sys file. also, id run it as a slave but its SATA and the only desktops i have here are IDE. would an external SATA enclosure work? if so i will go pick one up at lunch
 
If you press the F8 key a few times right when the post tests are ending and Windows is just about to start loading you can manually start up the system restore feature to see if bringing the system back to any date before the message was fist seen would correct this on it's own. Unfortunately the sfc /scannow command has to entered while Windows is running since that is a Windows system tool itself.

If the system restore worked that would save you the extra effort of installing the drive inside your case or buying an external closure in order to simply rename one file. Another idea is simply booting that other system with a live for Linux distro and manually deleting the corrupted file without any MS interference seen with access denied errors. From there you could manually expand a replacement copy at the recovery console after.

The last resort as mentioned earlier is the repair install method detailed in the article at the link there for seeing all system files installed fresh while leaving the programs and folders left intact. That's the non destructive way of restoring Windows. In some cases the video, sound, or both sets of drivers are the only that has to be reinstalled once Windows is up and running normally again.
 
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