Boot problems.

[bchivers]

Tried to do a repair from the windows disk but it was terminated before it finished, now every time I boot it does a checkdisk then says setup is restarting then hangs at a black screen. How do I get rid of the chkdsk and the setup?

 

[Markbnj]

Take this advice with a grain of salt until someone else weighs in. I am not sure whether the repair install updates the boot sector of the volume to point to its executable, or uses some other "run on boot" mechanism. But it might be worth trying the fixboot and fixmbr commands from the repair console. To do this either create a boot CD or boot from the install CD.

Here is some more information:

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/314503

 

[ColemontHD]

My suggestion is this, if you can, back up the files on the HD - wether it is an external or something. Reformat and recover.

 

[Brazen]

Why was it terminated? Have you tried doing a repair install again? What does checkdisk report? Any errors?

 

[Smilin]

Important questions we gotta have answered:

1. What type of repair?

Did you boot to CD and hit 'R' at welcome to setup (fast repair)
-or-
Hit Enter to setup then 'r' when it detected your install (inplace upgrade).

Sounds like you did the latter maybe.

2. Why were you running repair?



Need those answers, but here is some blind advice:
Boot to recovery console.
Run chkdsk like so:
Run "chkdsk" if it actually does something it means your dirty bit was set. run it again. If it actually does something again bad ****** has happened. Run it a third time with "chkdsk /r"
If "chkdsk" alone does nothing, your dirty bit is clear. Run a "chkdsk /p" which will ignore the dirty bit and run chkdsk. (remember the traditional /F switch is always on in recovery console).
If during these chkdsk returns info saying it has fixed one or more errors, run a chkdsk /p again to see if it comes back clean. If not - controller problem possible.
If during these runs it ever returns the word "unrecoverable" then it truly is unrecoverable (only certain ****** will cause this). At this point parallel install, mount drive elsewhere, whatever to get your data retrieved then format.

That should take care of the chkdsk thing.

Now the stuck in setup loop thing... the chkdsk might actually fix this (I'll give you 5:1 odds).

Give us details about what exactly the screen looks like before and during the hang. What splash screens if any are seen for instance.

Really, this is the part where I need to know why you were running a repair. If you were doing a mobo swap for instance you could have a bad driver or filter driver trying to load for your old hardware. edit: recovery console commands listsvc and disable would come in handy in such instances. If it's a filter driver though you'll need registry access to fix..

There is a KB out there on how to knock yourself out of mini-setup but to do so you need to reach your registry. If you get any part of gui-mode setup running you can shift-f10 to bring up a command prompt then regedit from there. Otherwise it's mount the drive in another box or parallel install to reach the registry with regedit.

 

[bchivers]

Sorry for not getting back to you, I must have forgotten to set instant email notification.
After we put the cpu back we started getting errors at boot, .dll's missing and was not able to boot.
Tried the repair install a few times. The repair was the second one on the windows disk.(Hit Enter to setup then 'r' when it detected your install (inplace upgrade).
The screen after the check disk is all black with a large white cursor. I will try to boot it again in the morning and write down all the screens that come up.
Thanks for all the help.

 

[Smilin]

Yeah details about what all 'does' work during the boot would help. Given that it's this early in the boot process it's almost certainly a start type 0 (boot) driver giving you trouble.

A listsvc in recovery console will tell you all the boot type drivers. If you see something 3rd party, or that looks like it doesn't belong, use disable to shut it down. Only do a few at once max. It's very easy to get into a stop 7b when disabling boot devices.

Did you have any luck with chkdsk in recovery console?

In the future, missing files can be fixed with brute force by doing this:
Parallel install then bring the parallel up to the same service pack.
Grab all the *files* from system32 and from system32\drivers and just copy them right over the top of the files in your busted install (always backup first of course). Be sure to only do files and NOT any subfolders. Once booting, hit windows update and repatch.

 

[Brazen]

I would boot to the recovery console and run a chkdsk from there. It would be easy and would eliminate a bad harddrive as the problem. You might also try memtest.

 

[bchivers]

The screens at boot are chkdsk is scheduled press any key to stop, if I stop it then it goes to a black screen with a white cursor and hangs. Ran the chkdsk thing did chkdsk /p found errors, ran it again no errors. Rebooted and was the same thing.
Tried the LISTSVC but I didn't know what to do when I got in there. Most things where disabled.

 

[Brazen]

I do you mean you did "chkdsk /f" ? I didn't think there is a /p switch to chckdsk. Anyway, after running a chkdsk /f and not getting errors on a subsequent chkdsk, you might try the repair install again. However, even though chkdsk found and fixed errors, if the drive is bad, new bad sectors could keep cropping up.

 

[bchivers]

Originally posted by: Brazen
I do you mean you did "chkdsk /f" ? I didn't think there is a /p switch to chckdsk. Anyway, after running a chkdsk /f and not getting errors on a subsequent chkdsk, you might try the repair install again. However, even though chkdsk found and fixed errors, if the drive is bad, new bad sectors could keep cropping up.

I do you mean you did "chkdsk /f" ? I didn't think there is a /p switch to chckdsk.

Check Smilin's post, 5 post back,

you might try the repair install again.

Tried this a couple of times with no luck. How do I check the HDD. to see if it is good?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: bchivers

Tried this a couple of times with no luck. How do I check the HDD. to see if it is good?

The only things I know of are chkdsk, or manufacturer tools. You can also enable SMART in your BIOS and it should give a SMART status during POST.

 

[Smilin]

if you run a chkdsk /p, find errors then run again and find no errors the filesystem should be good and stay that way. If not... 🙁

If chkdsk starts looping at startup again then either the dirty bit is getting set or the filesystem is getting new problems. Run chkdsk /p one last time from recovery console. If it finds errors again, stop running chkdsk or anything else on the drive. Get your data off by any means (parallel install, mount as 2nd drive) because the drive or controller is failing.

using listsvc+disable at recovery console = you don't have to know exactly what you are looking for. It will be a driver/service with a start type of "boot" and almost certainly be third party. Try some stuff, reboot, try more, reboot. If you accidentally disable something important, you'll Stop 0x0000007B. Just 'enable' that again.

The voodoo needed to pull yourself out of a gui-mode setup is pretty heavy. Given the conditions that got you here if you are not able to get the chkdsk and mini-setup to stop after the above steps, go ahead and break off and start getting ready for a reinstall. Getting stuck in mini-setup only leaves you with a few recovery options (shift-f10 at best if you can see the gui screen...which we can't). So we are already at point of diminishing returns on this. It would be a longshot for a guy on the MS setup team to get you fixed without a reload right now. I myself would go ahead and beat my head on the wall a bit longer, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else.


Brazen: yea the /p switch is recovery-console only. In recovery console there is no drive contention so the /f switch is technically always on but chkdsk will only run if the dirty bit is set (/p overrides). Net result is that /p switch in recovery console = /f switch in normal mode. We did that for simplicity's sake I think 😕

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Brazen: yea the /p switch is recovery-console only. In recovery console there is no drive contention so the /f switch is technically always on but chkdsk will only run if the dirty bit is set (/p overrides). Net result is that /p switch in recovery console = /f switch in normal mode. We did that for simplicity's sake I think 😕

Oh, that might be good to know. I think I've always done a chckdsk /? just to make sure I'm setting whatever switches are necessary, so if it shows up in the list, then I may have even used it before :beer: