paultherberet
asked on
I think its a hardware problem.
A friend of mine has a sony viao desktop. While working on it he accidently pulled the powercord out of the back. When he turned it back on it would not load windows. It got to the windows did not start properly page but none of the options would boot up. It was getting stuck at Mup.sys. Even safemode with command prompt faild to load. At first i thoght corrupt files. So i put in the XP disk to try to repair system. but it loaded the file and got stuck at windows is starting up. Changed the ram, disconected ide drives but still got stuck at windows is starting up. Any ideas. Could a power faliure corrupt the bios in any way. Thanks for reading and any help Paul from London.
Pulling the cord out of a running computer can create a surge in the components. If it was strictly a driver issue or software problem, the repair install should have fixed it. Your hard drive may have defects in it, perhaps due to a head crash, so I would test that out. Reset the BIOS, too, in case it got strange values.
Disk diagnostics
Maxtor/Quantum http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
Fujitsu http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/#diagnostic
Samsung http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/utilities/utilities_index.html
Seagate http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/
www.westerndigital.com
IBM and Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
Disk diagnostics
Maxtor/Quantum http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
Fujitsu http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/#diagnostic
Samsung http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/utilities/utilities_index.html
Seagate http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/
www.westerndigital.com
IBM and Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
ASKER
I have allready taken the hdd out and put in another pc as a slave. It seemed fine. Iwas albe to take off all the inportant data. So then i put the hdd back in the problem pc. i put windows xp cd in and boot from that. It hangs on "setup is starting windows". I try again with another formated hdd same thing happens again. Would i be right in saying that if i am booting win xp from the cd rom (so as to get to the recovery console" i am bypassing the hdd and the op sys. If so it should not be a software problem. Please help. Thanks.
ASKER
UPDATE!
i put the xp disk in booted from it and pressed F5. to get the HAL settings. I chose standard pc and hey it went throgh to the setup screen. any ideas what could be happing here.
i put the xp disk in booted from it and pressed F5. to get the HAL settings. I chose standard pc and hey it went throgh to the setup screen. any ideas what could be happing here.
Are you saying booting the from the CD with default settings doesn't work, but setting it explicitly to standard pc does?
ASKER
Yes that is exactly what i am sayin. Confused i am.
Your HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) file may have been corrupted during the power outage and causing the system to not be recognized.
ASKER
So what do i do to repaor this?
ASKER
That file would be part of the os so why then does the xp cd not run properly
A corrupt boot.ini can cause these problems, and may also prevent the CDROM from seeing the installation, in order to fix it. See https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/20328825/hal-dll.html
ASKER
Fair enogh but when i try to boot from the xp disk it freeze at "setup is starting windows" it dose not even make it to the repair option. Was i correct in saying that when you boot from an xp cd it bypass the HDD start up files. In any case if it could not see the previous install surly it would think it is performing a fresh install and act acordingly. I don't mean to awkwark but the comments do not seem to fit right for the problem. And as i said b4 i changed the hdd for a formatted one and it still froze at "setup is starting windows". All this from pulling out the power lead eh.
That sounds like the IDE controller is shot, if the CDROM drive and hard disk are known to work on other machines. If you removed the hard drive completely and the CDROM won't boot at least to the console, that would be evidence of it.
ASKER
Woe is me
ASKER
So no way it could be a corupt bios.
ASKER
If its a shot ide cont, could i attach a pci ide cont card and get round itthat way?
Yes, get one that has a BIOS that can boot the drive: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-102-002&depa=1
ASKER
Cheers. You might want to recomend this site for parts fro all your British friends
http://www.rlsupplies.co.uk/
http://www.rlsupplies.co.uk/
I usually leave that up to PeteLong, who is a longtime expert who lives there :-)
But I'll file that one away in my database.
But I'll file that one away in my database.
ASKER
Hi again. Got a new ide controller card but still no joy. I started suspecting it might not be the ide controller becauseit recognise the ide devices in the bios. Suppose its a new motherbard. Any more thoughts.
I agree - if a PCI IDE controller card doesn't do it, that leaves the motherboard.
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info on repair installs here:
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
or
http://www.theeldergeek.com/repairing_windows_xp.htm
[scroll down for info on the Recovery Console]
Last Known Good won't help you here.
If these don't work, you could also try a parallel install of windows (to a folder called, say, c:\winNEW). This would give access to the DATA, but not the apps installed. Or, the alternative way to get the data off, is to move the suspect hard disk to a different machine, and install it there as Slave. Faster, but you'll need to get the spanners out!