Fiery Color Controller E-8100 - FAIL

[cchrisj]

I have a Fiery Color Controller E-8100 for my Ricoh Pro C550 EX printer. Today I turned it on and got the following error: Windows could not start because the following file is either missing or corrupt:

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

Did the hard drive crash? It says I can attempt to repair by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD. I never received one from Ricoh. Can I make one?

 

[mattbeals]

Have you contacted EFI Support yet? I don't work for the Fiery division but I can try to help find someone if you would like me to. PM me your contact info and I'll do what I can.

 

[cchrisj]

I did. They said I should've received a Setup Disc. I found it (wasn't labeled like a typical Windows System CD). I have reinstalled and am waiting for Windows to "do its thing." We'll see ... I did have to reformat/loose all the info that was on the drive (or so the screen told me).

 

[mattbeals]

Sorry to hear that you lost all your configurations. What may be helpful in the future is to use Disk2VHD (found in the SysInternals Suite on technet.microsoft.com) to make a VHD/image of the system once you have it reconfigured. This way if the machine ever fails again you can restore it using the Windows Setup Disc to reload the VHD onto the drive. That should help make the process a little less painful.

I'm not sure what options the Fiery support team has for you but at least from a general systems management standpoint this always works. Plus if you end up with a HyperV Server in there somewhere you could run the VHD as a HyperV VM. You could do something similar with VMWare tools but that might be problematic for tech support.

 

[cchrisj]

Thought is was going well ... installed System ... installed User Software. Waited and waited. It said to remove User Software CD and then it would reboot. I did. It did. Now it just sits and says 'Starting up..."

 

[mattbeals]

Unfortunately I do not support the Fiery controllers, just Metrix, so I don't know how much more help I could be. I'd just give it time. I've had Windows do that to me several times when doing system and software installs. The only thing I can suggest is to watch the disk activity light. If it's on or blinking then something is going on. All you can really do is wait. As if we have lots of time to wait.

 

[msaeger]

It sounds like you have a monitor connected to it are you getting into windows after doing the reinstall?

Usually a reloading the system software will fix anything I almost never see hardware failures. It takes a couple hours to complete the reinstall of the system and user software. mattbeals is right about watching the hdd light if that is still blinking keep waiting.