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OT - HELP - Win2k is stuck in a loop at startup - Pagefile/drive related?

T

TuffGuy

Diamond Member
It keep on looping at the logging in/loading your settings screen. Background - I added a second drive set to "cable-select" for troubleshooting reasons. My original drive C got bumped down to F and the new "slave" drive got set as C. I've since removed/gotten rid of the second drive, but now my comp is stuf in an endless loop.

What can I do?

(yes, it crunches seti)
 
Bump for answer as I had this happen to me once...and I would love to know the answer....

Sorry TuffGuy...I was in the same boat at one time and finally gave up and reformatted and reinstalled :|

Somebody answer...so I can know too!

(Something about invalid pagefile drive...or something like that)

 
I hosed a couple of Win2K installs "testing" HDDs. oops If either of your HDDs are WD, they don't tolerate two masters well unless both are set as neutral rather than master.
Make sure your "C" drive is in the original config, ie master, slave, CS, or neutral.
run>regedit>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SYSTEM>MountedDevices>\DosDevices\X where X= the C drive. Right click and rename as C if it exists as F. If this basic fix doesn't work/apply, try to boot and repair from Win2K disk.
GL
 
This endless loop does it display an error at all? perhaps= missing pagefile?

This happens when people add NTFS hard drives or remove NTFS hard drives. The system without you knowing will setup a tiny pagefile on ALL NTFS drives, then when it can't see that tiny pagefile it freaks out. This can also happen if the pagefile was moved to another drive then removed, or if the drives get swapped like the poster mentioned then the original pagefile drive is removed-in this case there is no pagefile signature on the new drive, or the signature is too small.

This same thing can happen when ghosting win2000 from an NTFS drive. After the restore the pagefile signature is missing so the system halts.

The best way to avoid this is to manually move the pagefile to the drive you don't plan on removing. Or setting to good size pagefile on all drives, this way the system always has a pagefile to fall back on.
 
Sadly, I can't access either regular Win2k or Safe-Mode. All I can get is the endless loop start-up screen, with NO prompts or warnings.
 
Do you have an Emergency disk, or another PC with CD-ROM & Floppy?

If you have an Emergency disk, use it, and try to repair WIn2K. If not, and you have access to another PC with a CD-ROM & Floppy, take your Win2K CD-ROM and get 4 floppies, and create a Win2K installation set. There is a folder on the CD that has a program to create installation floppies. Once you have them created, boot up the loopy PC with the floppy #1, it will load all 4 floppies, then you can choose to repair Win2K or not. I'll have to check to see if there is a Repair Console command for repairing page files when I get home.

Some interesting Page File info from Microsoft:

Configuring Page files

Deleting Pagefile.sys

Recovery Console commands This is for XP, but many of the commands are the same. You can also type help at the command console to get a list of the commands.
 
No Win2k CD in the office right now. Would someone be willing to make me 4 zipped files that I can download?
 
Have you tried booting the system with that 2nd drive installed again... It should boot normally, then manually move the pagefile/swapfile to the NEW drive instead of the old one. Remove the drive after you shutdown, reboot and things should be peachy again.
 
OK, so I'm home, but I'm not sure how to create a zip file that would contain the system files etc. that would create a Win2K boot floppy. Is there a way to create an image of the floppy, then zip that? If so, what proggy would I use?
 
Ray - there's a cool site here that offers .img files for all sorts of windoze versions including the 4 2K floppies!

😀

(/me needs to go to bed! UGH! 😛)
 
Well,
There you go, TuffGuy!

But you might try putting in the new HD again, and moving the pagefiles around, as BreakApart suggested! 😀
 
thanks guys, i really appreciate it. unfortunately, i no longer have the old drive, so i can't try that solution.
 
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