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Stuck on Blue XP logo screen. tried almost everything.

S

sierra 13

Junior Member
Hello.

I know this is a long post, but I simply wrote down all I did after going through forums and the internet so u can imagine it is a long thread where I already did a lot of the things you suggested instead 🙂

Last night I rebooted my pc, when it loaded up it went through the windows XP32 flash screen and then to the blue windows logo screen - the one just before the desktop. This is 1 user PC so there is no user selection screen.
Problem is, its stuck on that screen forever (an entire night).
HDD lamp flickers once in a while but nothing else happens.

A few things I remember that happened before this started to happen:
1. Gerico F/W was terminated by force (end task).
2. AVG anti virus updated and requested boot.
3. During the first boot sequence Perfect disk claimed it could not gain unique access to drive D. (I defragged drive D before which contains no system files) afterwards the boot sequence continued but, as I mentioned, XP failed to load ever since.
4. Disconnected a USB printer.

I have an XP64 installation on the same PC which enables me to view the faulty XP32 system folders and files and play around with them fairly easy.

So far I tried the following:
1. Safe mode (all variations) - same result.
2. VGA mode - same result.
3. Last known good - same result.
4. No USB devices or anything external for that matter is connected.
5. Replaced the "system." and "software." files in %home%\system32\config with the ones from %home%\repair\ - XP loaded but who wants that? might as well reinstall windows...
6. Used the current "software." and "%home%\repair\system." - system loaded but with many s/w reporting missing components. (duh)
Action 6 led me to believe that the system registry got messed up although windows reports no error.
7. Used /log and /sos variables at boot.ini - windows didn't report any error but again, couldn't continue beyond the welcome logo screen.
8. Loaded "system." as a new hive on a different windows system - file loaded without any faults - so if it is corrupted it found a new way of corrupting itself.
9. Extract the file "winlogon" from the original XP CD. (read it somewhere, and thought what the heck). Rextracted from the SP2 files. no go.
10. Ran check disk. it found errors and fixed them. Needless to say it didnt help.
11. Reconnected the USB printer - no go.

Advices I am very thankful about but probably wont try:
1. Use original "system." and "software." - as I said, I might just as well reinstall windows and get a cleaner system.
2. Use the auto repair function in the Windows CD - same reason.

Things that donate me as an arrogant dumbass:
1. I don't have recovery options enabled on that PC, thought I'm too smart to waste that space. Now I know...

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

And another question:
I believe the "system32\config\system." is the registry keys for windows hardware and that: "system32\config\software." holds the registry for the installed s/w.
Would it be possible to load XP with the first boot "system." file and the current "software." file, reinstall all the system drivers and get my computer back?


Many thanks for you patience.
Sierra 13
 
Originally posted by: sierra 13
Hello.

I know this is a long post, but I simply wrote down all I did after going through forums and the internet so u can imagine it is a long thread where I already did a lot of the things you suggested instead 🙂

Last night I rebooted my pc, when it loaded up it went through the windows XP32 flash screen and then to the blue windows logo screen - the one just before the desktop. This is 1 user PC so there is no user selection screen.
Problem is, its stuck on that screen forever (an entire night).
HDD lamp flickers once in a while but nothing else happens.

A few things I remember that happened before this started to happen:
1. Gerico F/W was terminated by force (end task).
2. AVG anti virus updated and requested boot.
3. During the first boot sequence Perfect disk claimed it could not gain unique access to drive D. (I defragged drive D before which contains no system files) afterwards the boot sequence continued but, as I mentioned, XP failed to load ever since.
4. Disconnected a USB printer.

I have an XP64 installation on the same PC which enables me to view the faulty XP32 system folders and files and play around with them fairly easy.

So far I tried the following:
1. Safe mode (all variations) - same result.
2. VGA mode - same result.
3. Last known good - same result.
4. No USB devices or anything external for that matter is connected.
5. Replaced the "system." and "software." files in %home%\system32\config with the ones from %home%\repair\ - XP loaded but who wants that? might as well reinstall windows...
6. Used the current "software." and "%home%\repair\system." - system loaded but with many s/w reporting missing components. (duh)
Action 6 led me to believe that the system registry got messed up although windows reports no error.
7. Used /log and /sos variables at boot.ini - windows didn't report any error but again, couldn't continue beyond the welcome logo screen.
8. Loaded "system." as a new hive on a different windows system - file loaded without any faults - so if it is corrupted it found a new way of corrupting itself.
9. Extract the file "winlogon" from the original XP CD. (read it somewhere, and thought what the heck). Rextracted from the SP2 files. no go.
10. Ran check disk. it found errors and fixed them. Needless to say it didnt help.
11. Reconnected the USB printer - no go.

Advices I am very thankful about but probably wont try:
1. Use original "system." and "software." - as I said, I might just as well reinstall windows and get a cleaner system.
2. Use the auto repair function in the Windows CD - same reason.

Things that donate me as an arrogant dumbass:
1. I don't have recovery options enabled on that PC, thought I'm too smart to waste that space. Now I know...

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

And another question:
I believe the "system32\config\system." is the registry keys for windows hardware and that: "system32\config\software." holds the registry for the installed s/w.
Would it be possible to load XP with the first boot "system." file and the current "software." file, reinstall all the system drivers and get my computer back?


Many thanks for you patience.
Sierra 13
Click to expand...


You've done some good things!

Go into XP64, load regedt32 and load the original (XP32) System hive. Go to HKLM/Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\ on the XP32 install...userinit's value should be C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe, --- change that to userinit.exe and try rebooting and tell us if anything changes.

 
You've done some good things!

Go into XP64, load regedt32 and load the original (XP32) System hive. Go to HKLM/Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\ on the XP32 install...userinit's value should be C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe, --- change that to userinit.exe and try rebooting and tell us if anything changes.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
Will try right now, but i'm not sure how it will work.

The system hive contains hardware information, I couldn't find the key you mentioned there.
I loaded the software hive and there i did find that key and if i read your post correctly, you suggest i'd remove the comma and the end.
did that.
Will report in 5 minutes.

Sierra13.

 
No, I suggest that you just put "userinit.exe" in there, and nothing else. Can you give that a quick try?

When you get to this blue screen after booting, can you press CTRL-ALT-DEL and run explorer.exe?

 
Oops..
OK, i changed the key per your suggestion.
Windows ignored it. Nothing changed.
As for CTRL-ALT-DEL, nothing happens when i hit this combination.
The only response i get from Windows at that screen is that pc speaker beep (like when you hit too many keys), that happens only when i press Escape, Enter and Tab.
But other than the beep nothing happens.

Another thing. When i first replaced the winlogon file i accidently used the file from the original XP CD rom. When i did that i recieved a stop error regarding that file.
When i restored the winlogon file from SP2 it was back to the previous state (System wont advance past the blue logo screen) so i guess it processes the winlogon.exe file.

Also, as i said, it may be that the system hive is broken because windows does loads up with the current software hive and the first boot system hive. it just doesnt have any h/w drivers.

I tried comparing the hives (current system hive and first boot system hive) but that proved too much for my knowledge...
 
System.dat
User.dat

these are the files for the registry.

The backup files are
system.daX
user.daX [where X is a number]

As you can get into xp64, then this shouldn't be a problem for you - just do some file searches - these files are hidden/system/readonly etc, so you may have to change the attributes first
 
Originally posted by: montag451
System.dat
User.dat

these are the files for the registry.

The backup files are
system.daX
user.daX [where X is a number]

As you can get into xp64, then this shouldn't be a problem for you - just do some file searches - these files are hidden/system/readonly etc, so you may have to change the attributes first
Click to expand...

That sounds very Win95-ish: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;116250
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;175349

XP's registry is based on System, SAM, Software, and Security.
 
Instructions on how to manually restore the registry in WinXP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

They're instructions are very tedious but it's very simple if you can boot into a 2nd OS or use a BartPE disc. Just skip the first part then and just copy the registry files from your oldest restore point, reboot into safemode and use system restore to go back a week before the problem occured (due to the way system restore works you should go back at least a week or it may not fix the problem).

Hope this helps...
 
FP: ????

That's what the OP has already done, unfortunately - the repair bits don't help him, since he doesn't want to go back to that - he wants to fix what appears to be corruption in the System hive.

 
Thanks for your help so far.
As i said, i can get XP to load using one of those 2 methods:
1. Replace the system and software hives with the first boot versions.
2. Replace only the system hive with the first boot version.
Those two methods are lacking in the sense that while i can load XP, the system i receive is one from the first boot which is not very usful.

I don't have a restore point on that PC (my extreme bad).

I was wondering, could any of the registery cleaners like CC clean help? what will happen if i load the XP32 system hive to the XP64 registry and run CC clean?

And back to a question from my original post, should we come to the conclusion that we cant find whats wrong in my system hive,
Would it be possible to load XP with the first boot "system." file and the current "software." file, reinstall all the system drivers and get my computer back?
Click to expand...
 
You said that the PC beeps when pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del - could you disconnect the keyboard and try booting again?

If that doesn't work, have you tried removing everything but the motherboard, CPU, a stick of RAM, video card and hard disk? Remove any PCI devices, any optical drives (CD/DVD), floppy drives etc, and see if it will boot then.

I'm inclined to think that you have a registry problem, but it wouldn't hurt to eliminate hardware failure as well.

[Edit] If you have succesfully booted using the original registry hives, there is hope for you yet.

Boot Windows, and enter the c:\System Volume Information folder. This is hidden by default, and also denies access to everyone on the system. Turn on "Show Hidden Files" and turn off "Hide Protected System Files". Then, right-click -> Security, add your username in with Full Control (Add -> type your username -> OK -> check Full Control -> OK).

Then, enter the folder, drill down until you find a folder with a lot of "RPxx" folders (eg. RP85, RP90 etc). Inside these folders, you will find backups of your registry hives. Enter the highest-numbered folder, and then the "snapshot" folder. These are your hives.

Copy the following files to a directory on your C: drive:

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SAM
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM
_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SECURITY
_REGISTRY_USER_.DEFAULT

Rename them to:

SAM
SOFTWARE
SYSTEM
SECURITY
DEFAULT

Now, boot from the XP CD and enter the Recovery Console (first option, press "R"). Log in using the Administrator password, and proceed to copy the files you renamed from the folder on C: to C:\WINDOWS\system32\config, overwriting any files there.

This will restore the hives to the most recent backup copy, which should only revert the state by a few days. Reboot, and you should be good to go!

Hope this helps 🙂
 
Thanks Phil.
I have yet to try and remove the hardware and I will test that once I get home.

As for the rescue method you suggested using the c:\System Volume Information\ folder:
I tried that option but I only imported the _REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM file as this is the only hive that seems to be causing the problem.

Thing is, as I mentioned here earlier, I stupidly, disabled the System Restore option on this XP installation.
So while I still had the specified files in there, they are probably too young and actually they look very much like the ones located in \%home%\windows\repair\ i.e. When I used that hive, windows loaded but with no hardware drivers.

I think this evening I will try to load windows using the first boot system hive and the recent software hive, re-install the hardware devices and see what happens.

No matter what happens, this little ordeal has left me quite knowledgeable about the multitude of boot issues XP can present its users..

I will report here when I know more.

Sierra 13
 
A word of caution: mixing and matching hives from different dates is not recommended, as you will have discrepancies between the replaced hive and the original hives.

As you've disabled System Restore, you're in a pretty bad place - most "tweakers" say to disable it, but it's turned on and useful for this very reason.

Good luck though!
 
<sigh> i was afraid your'e gonna say that.
however seeing that it will be very difficult or impossible to fix the system hive (i mean, actually looking into the faulty hive and fixing it) I guess i will take the risk.
The worst case scenario would be to roll back to the first boot registry and if it indeed goes wrong, i would do that.

About the system restore issue.. yes, i read one of those tweakers articles too.. I did mention to my self that i should at least do a manual back up of the config folder but i kept telling to myself "what could go wrong??" its not as if im going on the wild side of windows...

Like back ups really... u keep tellin' yourself u will burn that 4 Gig My Documents folder but u never do it.. and then its too late...
 
Compress the file with WinRAR - how big is it?

If it's only a couple of meg, mail it over and i'll see if I can repair it at all.

[Edit] The Software one, that is. And I'll need the system32\repair copy as well, for comparison purposes.
 
Thanks!
The software hive is 12.7 Mb uncompressed.
2.15 Mb compressed.

The first version is 8 Mb uncompressed
1.4 Mb compressed.

You are most kind. If it still fits in your schedule, please send me your email in private.

Sierra13.

P.S.
But i thought the system hive is the faulty one since XP wont boot with it but will boot with the software hive?
 
Originally posted by: sierra 13
Thanks!
The software hive is 12.7 Mb uncompressed.
2.15 Mb compressed.

The first version is 8 Mb uncompressed
1.4 Mb compressed.

You are most kind. If it still fits in your schedule, please send me your email in private.

Sierra13.

P.S.
But i thought the system hive is the faulty one since XP wont boot with it but will boot with the software hive?
Click to expand...

Ah, if that's the case, then you'd better send the system hive- keeping a track of all these threads is a little confusing sometime 😉

I'll send you my email address via Private Message.
 
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