duyemura,
If youve discunted that can you put the hard drive in another working PC (XP or W2K) and rescue the important files? so you can flatten and reinstall your OS
Main Topics
Browse All Topics
Loading Advertisement...
Question
WinXP Not Booting - Safe Mode Won't Work - HELP!
I was working on my PC yesterday and started getting wierd occurrances errors. I have not installed anything or done anything configuration wise in days if not weeks now, so I can pretty much rule out that.... anyhow I decided to reboot because little strange things were happening (Photoshop would not open Imageready to save files... then when I tried to reload Photoshop it told me a non-recoverable system error occurred and it had to close).
When I rebooted, the system never came back up. It went through the OS choice screen ok, even made it to the screen with the XP logo and the three blocks scrolling across showing it's loading. After that, when it usually goes to the login/user choise screen, it goes blank.
From there, I only have myself to blame... I booted into safe mode ok, but was not really sure what to do and without networking (I could not get it to come back with networking) did not really have the Internet as a resource to troubleshoot. I ran some diagnostic tools (Norton DiskDoctor and stuff like that) and got some messages that there were some system files that were not of expected size or length or something like that. There was only like one or two errors, but it could not fix them because they were locked exclusively by Windows....
I brilliantly decided to REINSTALL XP, thinking that would fix the messed up system files. Well, it got through most of the new install ok, and then (as it always does) it fires a reboot. Once it reboots same thing happens... it goes to the XP logo screen... tells me setup is going to continune, and then turns black.... I've let it sit for hours, but something is not happening.. no HDD activity, nothing.
So now, I cannot get into safe mode. My OS is on it's own partition and most of my data is on an NTFS partition... however all my desktop stuff and emails are on the C drive, so I hesitate to just wipe out my C and reinstall. Is there any option to get around this? To make matters worse for some reason when I boot to DOS, I cannot access my A drive!!! I don't know if the *one* floppy I have is a bad floppy or what, but I cannot access it from DOS. I guess that's my last ditch chance, but if anyone knows a way to save my data on the C drive, please let me know..
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get
Instant Access to this Solution
- Plus...
- 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
- Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
- Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
- Never be left without tech help again
Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.
- "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
- "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
- "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.
See what Experts Exchange can do for you.
Got a question?
We've got the answer.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
Need individual assistance?
Our experts are ready to help.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Want to learn from the best?
Read articles from industry experts.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Working on a long term project?
Store your work and research.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Trusted by the world's most respected brands.
Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Free Tech Articles
-
WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
-
SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
-
Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
-
Create a Win7 Gadget
This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
-
Outlook continually prompting for username and password
There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
-
Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...
Cloud Class Webinars
- Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
- Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
- IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
- Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
- How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...
Join the Community
Give a Little. Get a Lot.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Answers
Petel:
I do not have Virus scanning on the BIOS... should I? do you think it's perhaps a virus?
Pete:
For some reason I totally forgot about that option! that will be my work-around if no other options.
Anotehr thing I forgot to mention... in my several attempt to load XP in different modes (safe, debugging, etc) one time and only one time in one of those debug or logging modes, I got a blue screen telling me that a driver (viaagp1.sys) had failed while loading. I don't know at this point if this is the cause of the error or aftermath of it but it's worth noting. I tracked that driver down to the 4-in-1 chipset driver for my onboard sound/video stuff... I am going to try to replace that file now.
OK status report:
1). I enabled the BIOS boot virus detection, but same.
2). While doing that, I changed a couple of settings in BIOS pertaining to plug and play items. I cannot remmeber exactly what it was, but it had to do with resetting the plug and play registrations I think
Doing this, I was able to boot up and actually begin the second part of the XP setup... HOWEVER, now it hangs at about 34 minutes till completion. It looks like it's while it's setting up the network. I left it there for a good 15 mins or so and the progress bar and time did not change at all.
Another thing to note is while I'm in this setup mode, the computer is acting like it has 32 MB RAM. the mouse trails, so it's hard to get it to go where you want it to, and everything in general acts sluggish...
Any ideas anyone?
Also, tired to boot from the CD, and the bios tells me:
Booting from ATAPI CDROM: Failure
Booting from ATAPI CDROM: Failure
then it just goes on to the windows OS selection screen. I put in a linux install CD to see if that would start the installer... and IT DID. I don't know what the hell is going on
dan
Hi
Are all your devices being detected properly by the BIOS. Check to see if there is a BIOS upgrade available from your mobo manufacturer. Since your hard drive, cdrom drive and floppy all have probs you should reseat all the cables from the mobo to the devices. One device may be causing you a problem with all three. Disconnect one at a time to see if the others work.
If you can still boot into safe mode, go to start>run> sfc.exe /scannow . This will scan the system files. You will need to insert the WinXP CD so any files that are missing orcorrupt will be copied.
If safe mode is not an option then since you can boot part of the way it may be an idea to use the WinXP recovery console. To start the Windows Recovery Console, use any of the following methods: Start your computer by using the Windows Setup floppy disks or the Windows CD-ROM. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press F10 or press R to repair, and start the Windows Recovery Console.
Check out http://support.microsoft.c
Once at the recovery console you can use the following commands to help fix the problem.
BOOTCFG /Rebuild : this rebuilds the xp boot configuration.
CHKDSK drive /p /r :The chkdsk command checks the specified drive and, if necessary, repairs or recovers the drive. The command also marks bad sectors and recovers readable information.
FIXBOOT drive name:Use this command to write the new Windows boot sector code on the system partition. In the command syntax, drive name is the drive letter where the boot sector will be written. This command fixes damage in the Windows boot sector. This command overrides the default of writing to the system boot partition.
FIXMBR device name: Use this command to repair the master boot record (MBR) of the boot partition. In the command syntax, device name is an optional device name that specifies the device that needs a new MBR. Use this command if a virus has damaged the MBR and Windows cannot start. You can obtain the device name from the output of the map command. If you do not specify a device name, the MBR of the boot device is repaired, for example: fixmbr \device\harddisk2. If FIXMBR detects an invalid or non-standard partition table signature, FIXMBR prompts you for permission before rewriting the MBR. FIXMBR is supported only on x86-based computers.
Also you could do a fresh install of XP onto the second partition where your data is so long as there is enough space. If XP installs ok onto that drive then you should be able to recover all your files. Or if you have another hard drive, install it and load XP onto it. Then run an SFC /scannow on the original drive.
Hope this helps
Definetly do as drcodrco has said first off.
Next, this sounds like one of two problems I've seen at our school recently, including (a) Virus on the boot sector, preventing proper boot up and allowing the virus to thrive throughout OS changes or (b) Bad memory/Hard disk.
If drcodrco's suggestions show nothing, then try switching out the memory for the box. Also, listen to the hard drive and see if you hear a distinct "clicking" noise coming from it. That clicking would indicate a failing hard disk.
Hey guys, thanks a TON for your advice... it turned out to be something about the viaagp1.sys file... I was able to download it on another computer and copy over the one I had here, and it worked!!!
It looks like whenever the monitor went vblank, the computer was still running as the first time back, it greeted me with a fresh XP install message... which means when I left it runnning on the blank screen the whole time, it was installing... and finished!
I'm so releaved... I"ll splot the points up among everyone who helped I know it's not much, but thanks again.
ok i have the excact symptons that duyemura had (and i still have 'em) but the root of my prob is norton.
i updated the virus dats on fri nite and then sat i got the windows logo....three little blocks...then a message sayin' "load needed dll's for kernel"
AAAAHHHHH!!!
the folks at norton ahve responded to my emails but i swear to god if they tell me to buy somrthing else from them to fix this i'm gonna scream.
whew there i feel better now. where was i?
oh yeah. this advice sounds exactly what i'm looking for and thanks a lot. if this does work, promise i'll do a backup way more often then i have been
Now here is an interesting variation of this. After a normal reboot before the weekend, the system rebooted to the Safe Mode screen under XP. However, selecting any of the safe mode options resulted in the machine starting to boot, getting (I think) to the an AGP driver and then hanging and then rebooting the machine from scratch. Tried taking out the graphics card and using the onbuilt graphics chip with no joy.
Fine, I thought time to use the Recovery Console. This is where it gets tricky as I have SATA disk. When XP gets to the recovery console it claims it can't find the hard-disk. Aftert a bit of fiddeling around, I put a set of SATA drivers onto a floppy. Hitting F4 (from memory) loaded up the drivers from the floppy. All seemed wel until it got to the start of the recovery mode again and you guessed it, it didn't find the SATA hard-disk. Obviously these drivers have previously worked. Help!
Before this all happened I had just reinstalled a Dynmo Label printer. I obviously suspect there is a connection.
I'm having a very similar problem, after a normal shutdown i restarted my computer, it started up normaly and then went to the boot options screen if i select safe mode the machine will freeze at agp440.sys if i select normal mode it will stop the count down but just sit there and do nothing. all the other options do the same.
I'm not going to reinstall anything as i can't loose any data off the HDD.
Has any one got any suggestions ??
This is really strange.
Suspect the change of the userinti.exe file has been replaced by wsaupdate.exe as part of a spyware program removed. The system is unable to load past the login gui. The answer is to reboot the computer from an XP CD to the Recovery Console and login as Administrator on the C:\%windir% (Press Number 1 on the menu). Create a tmp dir and copy all of the hives then copy the C:\windows\repair back to replace those taken from C:\windows\system32\config
The files you need are SYSTEM, SOFTWARE, SECURITY, SAM, and .default
This will let you restart your computer and login. It will be like a brand new installation.
Next you'll have to figure out how to modify the registry to import the settings necessary to get back your software (not the spyware) registry settings necessary for your applications to work properly.
Sorry . . .That should Read: userinit.exe. Which should be located in the C:\%Windows%\%System32% directory. There is a registry setting pointing elsewhere to a file named wsaupdate.exe -which replaces the microsoft userinit.exe file through registry settings - if you or your spyware software deleted this file, you are stuck. Renaming the file does not work.
3 Ways to Join
Business Accounts
- Perfect for organizations
- Multiple users
- Save over 36%
- Create a Business Account
Answer for Membership
- Earn free access
- Showcase your knowledge
- No credit card required
- Sign Up to Answer
Loading Advertisement...
by: PeteLongPosted on 2003-06-18 at 06:44:38ID: 8749102
Hello There
Do you have virus scanning enabled in the BIOS?
PeteL