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My PC Died (or maybe my OS died) - Can it be resurrected?

B

Borg20001

Senior member
🙁I have a Dell 8200, P4 1.8GHz, 256M RDRAM, 120G HD and 160G HD, GeForce 3 Ti-200 running WinXP Home with SP2 with up todate AVG antivirus software and ZoneAlarm running.

My son was converting a tape he and his friends made to digital format for burning onto a CD using Magix Audio Clean Lab 3.0. We've used this before with no problems. However, this time when he went to start up the program it gave a message that the virtual memory of 128M was too large and it would change it to 32M for the program. I clicked ok and it said this would take effect when the system was restarted. We however kept going with the program and he digitized his 5 min tape and cleaned it up and prepped it to be burned on the CD. I have a liteon CDRW drive and Nero CD burning software (OEM version of Nero 6). When he went to burn the CD, it would work through part way and then it said it had an error with the burning. This happened twice, so I ran a trouble shoot in the program and it said that there were old drivers and it could update. I clicked update the drivers and it said it needed to restart. We went with the restart and that's when the PC died.

It runs thru POST and then I get the first WinXP logo and a blue screen flashes for a second. I ran a camcorder while it went thru this blue screen and was able to read it back on freeze frame.

Here's what it said:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you?ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated.
Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption and then restart your computer.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007n (0xF9F89640, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Then it goes to a black screen with this text message:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this.

If your computer stopped responding, restarted unexpectedly, or was automatically shut down to protect your files and folders, choose Last Known Good Configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked.

If a previous startup attempt was interrupted due to a power failure or because the Power or Reset button was pressed, or if you aren?t sure what caused the problem, choose Start Windows Normally.

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked)

Start Windows Normally

Use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlight to your choice.
Seconds until Windows starts XX

Then the system counts down and tries to start up and we go thru the cycle again. I tried all the options, the Safe Mode startups end up with a screen full of codes about:

(something)(0)Disk(0)rdisk(0)partition1\windows\system32\drivers\and a bunch of different files that end with .sys

No matter what option I choose, it always ends up re POSTing and then we get back to the Black screen with the selections. So I can't check for viruses. I did not physically check the HD connections inside the pc yet as there was no occasion where the PC was moved or jostled.

Can anyone give me an idea on what happened and if it is possible to fix this problem or if I need to go to a professional.

Appreciate any hints your expertise can provide.

Borg20001
 
The listings that you got when trying to enter Safe Mode are normal. Were you not able to log in to Windows using Safe Mode after it finished listing all of the files that it was loading?

Also, are you sure that the stop error code was "STOP: 0x0000007n"?
I can't find any reference to that code anywhere on the Internet (including Microsoft's Knowledge Base).


If you have your Windows XP CD, you might be able to get Windows working again by using a Repair Installation. Boot to the CD, then choose to install Windows, and when it gives you the option to repair the installation or to install in a different location, choose to repair.
 
Far.

Thanks for the response. I believe that that is the stop code that I read, however, I had to use my camcorder to video the screen transition and then pause the frame to try to read what was there. To the best of my knowledge, that was what I was able to see, but the legibility of it was not very good.

After it went thru the Safe Mode login, it failed to actually start Windows. I tried each safe mode option shown there and each time, it would scroll through the listings of what was being loaded that I mentioned above, and then the screen would go blank and the system would go thru POST again and back to my Safe mode selections.

I will have to dig out my WinXP disc that came with the Dell PC, though I am not sure that it is a regular WinXP disc. I think it is something that Dell sends so you can reinstall Windows so I will try that as you suggest and see if a repair option is available.

Thanks again.
 
Someone has suggested to me that my system registry is bad. Microsoft's board has some arcane info about how to repair a corrupt system registry which does not allow WinXP to start up. but I am not sure that I follow what they say on there.

Is there anyway to recover the system registry (3rd party software etc.) rather than buy a new HD and reinstall everything on it?
 
Yup,

I tried all the options and they all had the same result. The system would blank out and then it would POST and dump me back at the start-up selection menu.
 
UPDATE - nevermind, I found the Diagnostics Disk that came with the PC and now am testing the HDs to see if they are ok. Next will be trying to recover from a corrupted registry.
 
I've been running the dell diagnostic for about 9 hrs now checking my 120G HD. Is this normal? Anyone have an idea of how long this should take? I don;t want to stop the testing if I don;t have to but I'm not sure how long I should wait. It doesnt seem to be looping and it is set to test 1 loop and so far no errors.
 
Ok, for anyone still willing to help out, I successfully ran the diagnostics 11.5 hours of running. Now I tried to repair the system registry by booting on my XP Setup disk and selecting the repair option, however when I choose repair it asks for an admin password, but I never set up an admin password so I just hit ENTER and it says, that is an invalid password?!!?

Anyone run into this or know of a way around it?
 
Originally posted by: Fardringle
Also, are you sure that the stop error code was "STOP: 0x0000007n"?
I can't find any reference to that code anywhere on the Internet (including Microsoft's Knowledge Base).


If you have your Windows XP CD, you might be able to get Windows working again by using a Repair Installation. Boot to the CD, then choose to install Windows, and when it gives you the option to repair the installation or to install in a different location, choose to repair.
Click to expand...

Welp after much checking and diagnosing, I called Dell and relooked at the bluescreen and found that I was wrong about the stop code:

It actually was "STOP: 0x0000007B"

So I am trying to run WinXP repair installation and hoping that I don't lose too much data.

Thanks for your help!
 
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