Posted on 05/20/2007 6:04:28 AM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu
A timeline:
The computer and destop shows up and the computuer seems to work. So shut down computer. Only restarted instead of shutting down to see if it worked (i.e. the Windows update icon was gone and the two Avast icons were there--such was the case). The next day (yesterday) when booting up, the computer displays a blue screen, and now it doesn't work.
Only going to be on for about another ten minutes, and the next time to go onto FR could be in about a week, so if you don't get an immediate response, ask that you don't get offended.
ping.
I can’t remember the name of the site but there is a better place than FreeRepublic for this.
Use your original recovery CD, and follow the instructions for a repair install:
XP Repair install
Please read carefully and make sure you followed the warning links before initiating the Repair Install. You can print a text version for reference. repair.txt
Boot the computer using the XP CD. You may need to change the boot order in the system BIOS so the CD boots before the hard drive. Check your system documentation for steps to access the BIOS and change the boot order.
When you see the “Welcome To Setup” screen, you will see the options below
This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft
Windows XP to run on your computer:
To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.
To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.
To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.
Press Enter to start the Windows Setup. do not choose
“To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R”, (you Do Not want to load Recovery Console). I repeat, do not choose “To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R”.
Accept the License Agreement and Windows will search for existing Windows installations.
Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair. If Repair is not one of the options, END setup. After the reboot read Warning#2!
Setup will copy the necessary files to the hard drive and reboot. Do not press any key to boot from CD when the message appears. Setup will continue as if it were doing a clean install, but your applications and settings will remain intact.
If you get files not found during the copying stage.
Blaster worm warning: Do not immediately activate over the internet when asked, enable the XP firewall before connecting to the internet. You can activate after the firewall is enabled. Control Panel - Network Connections. Right click the connection you use, Properties and there is a check box on the Advanced page.
KB 833330u Blaster removal
What You Should Know About the Sasser Worm and Its Variants
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-011
Reapply updates or service packs applied since initial Windows XP installation. Please note that a Repair Install using an Original pre service pack 1 or 2 XP CD used as the install media will remove SP1/SP2 respectively and service packs plus updates isssued after the service packs will need to be reapplied.
see: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
I assume you have your important files backed up and copies of your original applications.
Some techies would monkey around with the system to try to fix it but the fact that you post here looking for help suggests that you do not have that kind of comfort level. So aside from paying big money to have somebody fix it for you, best thing to do is re-install your original configuration and start from scratch.
Boot into recovery mode and restore your computer to its original state when you bought it. This will wipe your hard drive clean and make the computer like the day you bought it.
Remove all that "crap-ware" that PC makers like to install on store-bought systems.
Load any applications and then restore your files and settings.
Actually, it is good practice to do this with your computer once a year whether it has problems or not. Keeps your system clean and running fast. People that don't do this regularly end up with very slow computers.
Yes, my next computer purchase is going to be a Mac. I'm sick and tired of dealing with Windows crashes and other Windows issues.
DAMMIT!!! thanks for the info...
I have been seeing chkdsk show up on reboot for 2 days now... i wonder if I got it...
You look like you have got some useful responses...It has been my experience that people often enter threads like this just to give the poster a hard time. Good luck with that problem.
It should have been mentioned that the computer uses Windows 2000 professional, and this is being typed on another computer--how can the computer be checked for viruses and chkdsk be run with the computer being nonfunctional?
Which leads to to the next point: it almost can't be emphasized enough that not an expert on computers, so if the instructions could be given as though you were typing to an idiot, that would be helpful.
win2K pro has the same toolkit as xp, IIRC.
'Bye for about a week (God-willing), unless the computer starts working again, or can get access to another one.
You might be able to use Puppy Linux to at least get on-line. I downloaded the latest version yesterday, and I thought it was very impressive.
I had pretty much the same thing happen to my laptop. I used a program called VCOM Fixit. It was kinda pricey (~$50) but it allowed me to boot from their CD and fix the corrupted disk information without losing everything like you would if you do a windows recovery.
I’m sure there are other programs that do this but you need to find one that the computer will boot from since windows is not operating.
OOPS, Didn’t see this. The Fixit fix I did was on an XP computer.
Can you take the disk out and attach it to another computer to check its file system there?
I’ve run into this problem before, usually after a major hardware upgrade (motherboard), but a couple of times after a drive hiccup.
Let’s hope your file tables are still intact; sometimes it’s just the boot sector or even a single bad file table copy that can cause it not to boot.
There are a two or three you can do to salvage your installation. The first is to see if you can boot into safe mode. If you can, you can run another chkdsk from there, or it may be updated controller drivers from the service pack that caused the problem. You could try to uninstall the service pack, or if that doesn’t work, you could go into the hardware manager and remove the drive controller. This would allow windows to revert to a basic controller and reinstall it upon bootup if that were the problem.
If that doesn’t work, you may still have an actual problem with the drive info. Next would be to try to run another chkdsk. You do this by booting up your win2k installation cd and going into console repair mode. This will allow you a very basic command line to run a chkdsk. Boot up the win2k cd, then select repair instead of install and then you select the command console (don’t remember what it’s actually called and my other pc’s are in use atm to check). You’ll have to put in your administator password and it’ll give you a command line.
Then you can type in chkdsk (drive) /p
This will run another chkdsk. When it’s done, reboot and see if you start up normally.
If not, one other option is a reinstall of windows on top of your old installation. This will prevent you from losing anything; programs, data, everything will still be there and registered. You may just have to do a bunch of windows updates afterward. You start this in the same manner as a regular installation, but you choose to do a repair in the install section of the windows setup. Don’t choose an alternate directory and definitely do not choose to create a new partition or format.
I’ve done it quite a few times for myself and clients to repair a win2k installation that was thought to be lost, but don’t have the exact details on my mind right now. I’ll try to find someone who does and give you a link, or I’ll go back and recreate one on one of these older pc’s so I can give you a detailed list of instructions for it, but it may be tomorrow before I get back to this post.
He can’t do a mbr replacement from a dos disk being win2k, but it’s the same procedure from within the recovery console, slightly different command. But having done these a number of times, it’s most likely a driver inconsistency that isn’t allowing the ntfs tables to be read, or they’ve gotten a bit trashed which the chkdsk should be able to fix. Getting the inaccesible boot device error means it hasn’t gotten to the bulk of his registry yet and it should be okay, so long as the rest of the drive is too.
That reminds me, for Jedi, when in the recovery console and you enter the chkdsk command, it sometimes will ask you for the path to the autochk command. It’s normally c:\winnt\system32 but will be whatever drive and system folder for windows you have.
Appreciated. Turns out that have gotten access to another computer in less than a week. Hopefully with the advice given on this thread the old computer can be made to work again, especially as that one has a bunch of files and other personalized stuff.
That might work--you see, personally not a computer expert.
Safe mode (and all the other options on the screen) doesn’t work. It goes to a black screen with a white progress bar on the bottom (which it normally does), then to the Windows Professional 2000 start-up screen and there is a blue progress bar on the bottom (also normal), but either exactly halfway or a bit over halfway, the progress bar stops for a few seconds and then the blue screen comes up.
I’m sure MS has a patent on that blue screen of death. That’s one that Linux will never have. Install Linux and don’t ever patronize MS again, problem solved for good.
Going to try snowlislander’s suggestion as it seems by far the easiest for a computer super-novice. It should be downloading onto CD right now. Seems as though programs will have to be reinstalled and files are gone—at least temporarily though.
That should run in memory, if you take that route, and not hurt any of your files. Then what?
papa
But then the black Starting Windows screen came up, and went to the Windows 2000 Professional screen with the starting up blue bar.... and then the blue screen came up again.
It continues to do so on repeated attempts.
Is that how Linux is supposed to be put onto the computer? Or was there an accident in the burning of the CD? Also, Puppy Linux wasn't registered--should it be?
No, you don't need to register Puppy.
As to the failure to boot the CD, it sounds to me like you took the right steps, so I don't know why the CD wasn't picked up as a bootable device. However, from looking at the Puppy website, the most common reason for CD problems apparently is that one burns Puppy as an ordinary file rather than as an ISO:
If you don't know anything about burning an ISO file to CD, read the documentation that comes with your CD-burner software. The biggest single mistake is that people treat the "puppy-2.xx-xxxx.iso" file as just a file, and write it to CD. Any decent CD-burner software will have a special menu selection for writing an ISO file to CD. You will know that you have succeeded if, after burning it, you use a file manager such as Windows Explorer to look at the CD and you see the files "image.gz", "vmlinuz", etc. If you see the file "puppy-2.xx-xxxx.iso" then you did it wrong!
The thing to understand about an ISO file is that it is a snapshot of the entire contents of a CD, so has lots of files inside it.
I remember using a program called Nero to burn some CDs on a Windows machine a few years ago (I normally use "cdrecord" under Linux) and I remember that it was a bit tedious trying to find the ISO option in the menus since it was called something else.
This is a bit late, but trying to get Puppy Linux up and running on the other computer. As of now, it can’t connect to the internet, and the linux cannot be put onto the hard drive because an ‘NTFS’ file is unclean, and it is suggesting to do with Windows, which can’t be accessed, hence the point of installing Puppy Linux.
If by some odd chance you happen to still be on here, Puppy Linux is now on the other computer, but it still can’t connect to the internet, and can’t be put onto the hard drive because the Windows ‘NTFS’ file is unclean. It suggests going to Windows and shutting it down properly, or some other things with Windows. The thing is, can’t access Windows, which is the point of putting in Linux. If the computer (which currently has Linux) is shut down, when the computer is started again, will Linux come up again, or will it go to Linux? Tried once, and it tried to go to Windows (and therefore went to the blue screen). It seemed as though Linux had to be reinstalled (had to personally press enter or type xorg and other things starting in x).
When Puppy talks about NTFS not being clean, this is because it wants to save some "Pup" files that cache your settings for Puppy. If you have a USB memory stick, you can save those there rather than on an iffy NTFS partition.
If you remove the CD, Puppy Linux should not come up since it is booting off the CD. (You can choose to install it to another device --- there's a menu option called "Puppy Universal Installer" which would let you install it on other media. If you have data on the hard disk that you care about, then I wouldn't install it on your hard disk since Puppy is reporting that its NTFS partition isn't clean. Most Linux installations will let you resize a NTFS partition, but I don't think I would try that with one that is reporting consistency problems unless I didn't care about the data in the NTFS partition.)
As to "X", what Puppy is trying to do is best use your monitor for its windowing system; the Vesa mode, which does work on almost all hardware, doesn't have any other redeeming features --- but if you aren't going to use Puppy much, Vesa is a good simple choice to make.
It does sound like he needed to burn the cd as an image.
If you have puppy up and going, you MAY want to try this:
Copy over your ntoskrnl.exe file from another machine.
Several times, that has fixed the bsod problem for me. That is, until I went to Mepis Linux.
It does sound like he needed to burn the cd as an image.
Hi jedi.
I am not sure. When Puppy linux begins booting up, it SHOULD give you a scrolling description of what drivers are loaded, and what pieces of hardware are functional. Not using PL, I can say that MEPIS is THE BEST as far as “just working” right out of the box. If you have an older machine (not TOO old, but anything within the last 4-5 years) MEPIS always “just works.” Now, If you have some really funky obscure “E machines got this really cool network card on closeout from Pakistan which needs these drivers” nic in your machine, it might NOT pick it up, but I have yet to use it when it did not just grab the stuff and load it up. When you d/l the iso file, then burn it to cd AS A CD IMAGE. It has been so long since I used Nero or the other programs (windows cd burner, too), that I can’t remember the exact commands, but you shoudl be able to scout around and find how to be sure you burn as an IMAGE and not a FILE. I use the linux stuff now (it is so much easier) and K3B is really idiot proof.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but I’d be interested in isolating the problem if I were you. If you have the same kind of drive interface in another computer, just attach it and power it up. When it comes up online, try to access the files. You may continue having errors; if so, it’s the file system or the drive’s hardware. If not, then you have hardware issues on the down host computer.
Appreciated.
I am sorry I am not more help. I remember this kind of stuff happening to me and I know it is not pleasant. Please feel free to question and I will try to help if I can.
Ironically, the updates (avast, the patch, and .NET service pack 1) were downloaded to prevent a virus from destroying the computer. Turns out at least one of those updates could have been more destructive than a hypothetical virus.
Thanks for your advice, but in my opinion my answer was also a considered one.
MEPIS is a fine Debian derivative, but I think that it falls in the Knoppix school of massive distributions.
Generally I have found that Puppy and DSL are excellent with hardware (DSL in particular is good with older hardware that is happier with a 2.4 kernel.) They are both quite fast (they try to run completely in memory) and generally support very reasonable windowing systems on small resources. They both download in a reasonable amount of time on limited bandwidth --- the cd images can be quite small for both, unlike Knoppix or MEPIS.
But since apparently my suggestion of Puppy has not resulted in a positive situation, I will happily echo your suggestion of MEPIS (or Knoppix.)
I just booted both Puppy and MEPIS on an older machine; Puppy as I expected was much faster (it's running entirely in memory, but MEPIS has to reference the CDROM), but both did a perfectly good job of detecting the hardware and getting things going. Puppy at 95 megabytes was a much faster download than MEPIS's 700 megabytes.
There’s a linksys cardbus(?) on the broken computer. When Puppy is run, the cardbus doesn’t light up, and no internet connection is detected.
HERE is a nice little tutorial on that issue
But what are the instructions for running CHKDSK voluntarily?
run-->command-->chkdsk
By swapping hard drives, or by putting it into something with a cable attaching it to the computer via a usb port? If the latter, what's the thing that holds the hard drive called?
If you have a usb adaptor for a hard drive, then use it, otherwise just follow the instructions in the tutorial linked above.
By coincidence, the machine that I booted Puppy with had a Linksys Ethernet board in it. If you would like to, you can look under the setup icon (or the setup menu choice) and find networking, and from there is a detection/setup area.
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