Windows boot problem

[Homerboy]

My brother dropped off his PC for the standard "free work for a family member deal"

Seems his PCs powers on, goes through bios fine, gets to the windows XP splash screen for like 1 sec then there is a micro sec flash of a BSOD then it reboots (back to bios and the cycle continues...

Safe mode will simply stop booting after all the text screens pass by. It just sits there with a screen full of text.

I've disconnected all the non-vitals, tried new RAM, reset the CPU and all the bios settings....

Im stuck.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
My brother dropped off his PC for the standard "free work for a family member deal"

Seems his PCs powers on, goes through bios fine, gets to the windows XP splash screen for like 1 sec then there is a micro sec flash of a BSOD then it reboots (back to bios and the cycle continues...

Safe mode will simply stop booting after all the text screens pass by. It just sits there with a screen full of text.

I've disconnected all the non-vitals, tried new RAM, reset the CPU and all the bios settings....

Im stuck.

You can do a repair - that should resolve the no-boot. You can try last known good, to see what that would do. What happened prior to this problem?

 

[Homerboy]

I do boot into "last known good" and the same thing happens
I do the F8 prior to boot, get the menu choose start windows last known good and it loops still.

this sucks

 

[imported_tightflks]

man i have no clue, some might suggest piuttin in a xp cd, and do a repair, but i dont no how to work that

 

[Ryoga]

Try booting to Safe Mode. If you can, go to System Properties --> Advanced --> Startup and Recovery, and disable Automatically Reboot. That will let you read the BSOD error.

If that's not an option, you can use the Recovery Console to try to access the files in C:\windows\minidump\. Theres numerous people here who can decode what they mean, or you can try to figure out how to use the debugging tools yourself. Recovery console is also useful for running chkdsk and for trying to recover/repair the registry.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
My brother dropped off his PC for the standard "free work for a family member deal"

Seems his PCs powers on, goes through bios fine, gets to the windows XP splash screen for like 1 sec then there is a micro sec flash of a BSOD then it reboots (back to bios and the cycle continues...

Safe mode will simply stop booting after all the text screens pass by. It just sits there with a screen full of text.

I've disconnected all the non-vitals, tried new RAM, reset the CPU and all the bios settings....

Im stuck.

You can send me the minidumps if you like....

 

[Smilin]

If you are totally non-bootable you won't be able to get us those dumps. You can copy in with RC, but not out unless you've changed your default security policy.

It sounds like maybe a Stop 0x000007B but you won't be sure until you turn off the auto reboot. You can do that by editing the original registry from a repair install. See 'load hive' in regedit help for info. The key you want to set is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CrashControl!AutoReboot = 0.

If you are feeling lucky run a chkdsk /p from recovery console - you could get lucky and straighten out what ever boot or system service/driver is failing.

If you can get the parallel on you can also check the event logs on the original install or get those minidumps to us. The original logs will be in system32\config called sysevent.evt appevent.evt and secevent.evt. If after seeing the bluescreen it gives you a specific driver or service causing a problem you can kill it with the recovery console listsvc and disable commands. You can also kill it in the original registry by setting the start on the service/driver to 4. They are found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services. If it's a filter driver you may need to disable it elsewhere as well. (outside scope of this post, hit me up if you want).

If you are feeling lazy about the whole issue and want to just take a hammer to it, do a repair / inplace upgrade. Boot from your XP CD, press enter to setup, F8, choose your install and choose repair when prompted.

 

[flashmx2004]

I had a problem similar to this; it was because of the video card. Perhaps you should try putting in another video card.

 

[TheITguy]

Like the others said you are going to have to do a repair

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Smilin
If you are totally non-bootable you won't be able to get us those dumps. You can copy in with RC, but not out unless you've changed your default security policy.

It sounds like maybe a Stop 0x000007B but you won't be sure until you turn off the auto reboot. You can do that by editing the original registry from a repair install. See 'load hive' in regedit help for info. The key you want to set is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CrashControl!AutoReboot = 0.

If you are feeling lucky run a chkdsk /p from recovery console - you could get lucky and straighten out what ever boot or system service/driver is failing.

If you can get the parallel on you can also check the event logs on the original install or get those minidumps to us. The original logs will be in system32\config called sysevent.evt appevent.evt and secevent.evt. If after seeing the bluescreen it gives you a specific driver or service causing a problem you can kill it with the recovery console listsvc and disable commands. You can also kill it in the original registry by setting the start on the service/driver to 4. They are found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services. If it's a filter driver you may need to disable it elsewhere as well. (outside scope of this post, hit me up if you want).

If you are feeling lazy about the whole issue and want to just take a hammer to it, do a repair / inplace upgrade. Boot from your XP CD, press enter to setup, F8, choose your install and choose repair when prompted.

Smilin's advice sounds good to me - sounds like OP has multiple machines, so it might be best to pop the disk out of the bad box, put it in another good box, boot with the good box's hard drive, then do the chkdsk, do the crashcontrol change, and then grab the memory.dmp file (or minidump) in c:\windows or c:\windows\minidump, respectively, and then mail it (the minidump, that is) to me & others. I can (sometimes!) see what's going on, and then make suggestions (like disable such and such driver - do that by going into the registry on the other box and changing services start types, as Smilin said.)

Bear in mind that CS001 isn't always the correct control set to modify. Typically it is, but we should look in HKLM/Select/Current to be sure.

And I agree with the 'lazy' bit too - usually that will work just fine, and with minimal effort too.

 

[Sianath]

Just FYI, a repair installation will not fix registry issues that prevent you from booting. The best it will do is replace missing information that is only set during the installation of Windows. If all that information is fine, your registry will remain unaffected.

One thing that was not mentioned (shame on you Smilin! =P) is to swap the system/software registry hive from the windows\repair folder. If the no-boot is due to a registry issue, that will get you booted, with the added bonus of then being able to disable the automatic restart so you can see what bugcheck you are getting.

This single step also tells you whether the problem is due to the registry or mismatched files. (excluding hardware as the culprit of course). I'm a big fan of troubleshooting steps that eliminate 50% of my troubleshooting options.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Sianath
Just FYI, a repair installation will not fix registry issues that prevent you from booting. The best it will do is replace missing information that is only set during the installation of Windows. If all that information is fine, your registry will remain unaffected.

One thing that was not mentioned (shame on you Smilin! =P) is to swap the system/software registry hive from the windows\repair folder. If the no-boot is due to a registry issue, that will get you booted, with the added bonus of then being able to disable the automatic restart so you can see what bugcheck you are getting.

This single step also tells you whether the problem is due to the registry or mismatched files. (excluding hardware as the culprit of course). I'm a big fan of troubleshooting steps that eliminate 50% of my troubleshooting options.

Yeah yeah, I know.

But geeze how many times to I have to do a writeup on how to swap hives?? I bet I've posted it 10 times here. It's like homework any more. Now he's gonna respond wanting more details and next thing you know you're explaining hives in the regback and sys vol info folders.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Yeah yeah, I know.

But geeze how many times to I have to do a writeup on how to swap hives?? I bet I've posted it 10 times here. It's like homework any more. Now he's gonna respond wanting more details and next thing you know you're explaining hives in the regback and sys vol info folders.

Link to this:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=32&threadid=1359897&enterthread=y

(Check out step #10. It's a start, at least.)