Using pg hotbackup directly without wal archives

Hello,

I need to ask if there is a way to use the pg hot backup taken via
pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() calls directly without using the wal
archives.

If I start postgres with just base backup without setting up recovery.conf
for fetching archived wal logs, I get this im the log files:

2016-10-26 06:48:25 UTC LOG: database system was shut down in recovery at
2016-10-25 15:50:16 UTC
2016-10-26 06:48:25 UTC LOG: invalid primary checkpoint record
2016-10-26 06:48:25 UTC LOG: invalid secondary checkpoint record
2016-10-26 06:48:25 UTC PANIC: could not locate a valid checkpoint record
2016-10-26 06:48:25 UTC LOG: startup process (PID 980) was terminated by
signal 6: Aborted
2016-10-26 06:48:25 UTC LOG: aborting startup due to startup process
failure

Also, I noticed that if I run pg_resetxlog, I am able to start postgres,
but I am not sure if the database is consistent after running
pg_resetxlog. Is database state consistent after running pg_resetxlog on
this hot backup?

Thanks,
Ayush Goyal