Windows won't boot after updates *NOT SOLVED*

[Rebel7254]

I have been out of town on business this week. I came home last night, and my wife informed me that something is wrong with the computer. She said it would just sit at the Windows XP loading screen for 5 minutes, and then it just reboots. So I checked it out, and sure enough that's what happened. It just stayed at the Windows XP splash screen for several minutes, hard drive churning away the whole time, the all of the sudden it splashes a blue screen (only for a split second, no way to see what it said) and it reboots.

She said on Thursday night when she shut it down that it gave an option to either Turn Off or Turn Off and install important updates. She said it was just the standard message after going to Start > Shut Down... that we've all seen before. Ever since then, we've been having this problem.

I have a second hard drive that has Windows Vista on it. I usually don't work in Vista because the few games I play run better on XP (not to mention XP performs faster overall). Anyway, I thought that if the Windows updates for XP were the problem, there was no way that it should have affected my Vista installation. So I booted up from the HDD with Vista on it, and it did a variation of the same thing. After the Microsoft loading screen, the screen just went black. I waited for several minutes but it never did reboot.

I tried going into Safe Mode on both drives. They both lock up too (didn't wait long enough for the reboot).

What are the possibilities here? I don't see how installing updates for XP could have screwed up my Vista installation on a completely different HDD, so it's either somebody hacked us or a hardware problem, right?

If it's hardware, what are the most likely culprits? I would have to rule the HDDs out, as I think that the chances that BOTH of them have gone bad at the sametime are pretty slim.

I thank you in advance for any help, and I'll be glad to answer any questions you have for me that might assist you in identifying my problem. I'm using a company laptop from work this weekend. I went out and bought an HDD enclosure in preparation for the possibility that I was hacked and needed to view the HDD to see if I could back up some of my files.

 

[Shlong]

I believe this happened to me a while back, I think some dll files in my system32 folder got corrupted (wouldn't boot into safe mode) and would reboot immediately after blue screen. I believe there's a way to prevent rebooting so you can see the error message on the blue screen, but I fixed it by doing a windows repair.

 

[Rebel7254]

Which files does the Windows repair preserve? If the only choice it gives you is to back up everything in the Documents and Settings folders (seems I've heard before that such is the case), then I'll probably just proceed with my plan to take the hard drives out and back up the files myself. Not all of the files I want to back up are in the Documents and Settings folders.

Also, even if some system files got corrupted by installing some updates in XP, how could that affect my Vista installation on a completely different hard drive?

 

[corkyg]

Did you try System Restore to an earlier date when it was working?

With the same problem on two separate HDDs, it points to a hardware problem common to both. Try memory shifts.

 

[Rebel7254]

I had no opportunity to do a system restore. By the time the problem started, I couldn't get back into Windows.

By memory shifts, you mean experiment with changing slots with the sicks of RAM?

 

[Shlong]

Originally posted by: Rebel7254
Which files does the Windows repair preserve? If the only choice it gives you is to back up everything in the Documents and Settings folders (seems I've heard before that such is the case), then I'll probably just proceed with my plan to take the hard drives out and back up the files myself. Not all of the files I want to back up are in the Documents and Settings folders.

Also, even if some system files got corrupted by installing some updates in XP, how could that affect my Vista installation on a completely different hard drive?

If I remember correctly it preserves almost everything, I didn't have to reinstall Photoshop or ffdshow.

 

[Rebel7254]

Well here's an update.

I booted up today and it looked like it was going to do the same thing, so I tried taking out one stick of RAM. It still took much longer than normal to get past the Windows XP loading screen, but this time it finally did. It said one of my disks needed to be checked for consistency. The test went through all three stages with no errors.

I was able to log into Windows and everything appeared normal. I restarted, and this time it went through to the login screen without stopping. However, it still took MUCH longer than normal to get past the Windows XP loading screen.

Out of curiosity, I slapped the other stick of RAM back in to see what would happen. There was no difference that I could tell.

Then I downloaded a HDD diagnostic tool from Seagate, which was a DOS program. I burned an .iso image to CD and booted fromit. I ran the "short" test on both hard drives and both "PASSED" with no errors. Then I ran the "long" test on the XP hard drive. It took over an hour, but the same result; PASSED with no errors. I didn't run the long test on the Vista drive.

So after I restarted and got back into Windows (still taking way longer than it used to), I decided to look and see what updates had been installed in the Add/Remove Programs section. None of the updates listed there had an installation date earlier than 4/10/08, which is odd because my wife said it installed updates the night of 4/17/08 when she shut the system down.

Then I decided to load up a game (Assassin's Creed) to see what would happen. Just like the problem with getting into Windows, it was taking a reallly long time to get to the game's main menu. When I tried to actually continue my campaign on the game, it took at least 3 or 4 minutes to actually start playing, a process which took maybe 30 seconds before any of these problems started. Well, the game ran like crap. It used to run fine before, but it was chopping all over the place and basically unplayable.

I exited out of the game and now I'm running memtest to test my RAM. It's running right now. If I don't get any errors on that, then I'm not sure what in the world could be wrong. Something happened overnight that has just crippled my PC's performance.

When I go to system information, or use CPU-Z, everything looks fine. It's recognizing all the RAM in dual channel mode and the CPU stats look ok.

btw, I went into my vid card properties to make sure she didn't install Nvidia drivers. She hadn't, because the driver version was the same as it was before I left on Tuesday.

If memtest runs with 0 errors, then I'll try a system restore.

 

[corkyg]

OK . . . that's progress. BTW, when was the last time you otpimized/defragged you drive? Ran a malware scan?

 

[Rebel7254]

The problem has been solved.

I was using Windows Defender for my malicious software/spyware detection and removal. Well, apparently the "update" my wife was talking about was new definitions for Windows Defender. I was getting ready to do a system restore when I noticed that the last restore point was the Thursday night that the definitions were installed. I didn't know until I googled a little bit later, because all it said in the description box for the restore point was "Software Distribution 3.0".

I did a google search for "Software Distribution 3.0" and found a forum where somebody posted the same sort of problems I was having. Come to find out, the culprit is Windows Defender, so he just uninstalled Windows Defender and everything was fine. I did the same thing, but it was still slow after uninstalling the program. I did a System Restore using a restore point from a System Checkpoint on April 14th. I uninstalled Windows Defender again, and now everything is back to the way it was before I had any of these problems.

I'll have to check into getting something else for my anti-spyware/malware needs.

Thanks for trying to help me. Even though I lucked into the solution and found it somewhere else, Anandtech forum users may benefit in the future from this. I certainly wasn't aware that a definitions update for Windows Defender would cause these problems, and maybe there a lot of others out there who didn't realize it as well.

 

[Blazer]

glad you got it sorted out, from my reading of the forums i have turned off auto updates from M$.

 

[Rebel7254]

Well it started the same crap again today. I've run multiple diagnostic tests for the RAM and HDD's, and I don't get any errors or problems found.

I installed McAfee Total Protection for Small Business (got it from work) and scanned. It found nothing on my XP drive, and 53 "threats" on my Vista drive which it deleted.

My Vista installation seems to be fine now. Go figure. But my XP drive is apparently bad, despite the diagnostic tests showing otherwise. Either that, or some malicious software has corrupted it to the point that I can't even do a Repair from my Windows XP installation CD. The first time, it hung on "Installing Devices" during Windows XP setup saying "Approximately 34 mins until setup is complete" or whatever. So I turned my head for a few minutes to do a couple of things, and I heard the PC reboot. I don't know what happened. When it rebooted and got past the Windows XP loading screen, it said "Setup is being restarted..." and it started all over. Same thing happened again with the hanging at Installing Devices with "34 mins" to go. However, this time it didn't restart. It finally popped up a warning box saying that the software I was trying to install for "Primary IDE Channel" hadn't passed Windows logo testing and if I wanted to continue anyway. I found this odd, but I clicked yes. So it went back to just hanging at the setup screen until it asked me the same question again. This time I clicked No. Then I waited another ten minutes and just gave up and rebooted into Vista, which is where I am now.

I still can't decide if this is a software or hardware problem. Do any of you have any ideas? I'm stumped now. I would back up all my files from my XP drive and reformat, but I'm concerned about that for two reasons:

1) If the HDD itself is the problem, then it will be a big waste of time

2) If a virus is causing the problem, obviously it hasn't been deleted and is still running amok on the hard drive. I'm afraid that when I copy over the files I want to back up, I'll just bring the virus over with them.

I just can't determine the best course of action. Your help is very much appreciated.

 

[conorvansmack]

I did a fresh install of XP on my PC this past weekend and I'm having the same problem. I'll try a repair and then I'll uninstall Windows Defender. I had a feeling that out of the 95 or so things that came through Windows Update, there was a problem.

I'll post my results if I'm able to completely get into Windows later today/tonight.

 

[C1]

Just a reminder:

ALWAYS ensure that the "Automatically Restart" box is unchecked in the "Startup and Recovery" panel (Control Panel, System, Advanced, Startup & Recovery). (Automatic Restart is default.) You just want the Error Log & Alert otherwise you can get caught up in a loop when the right system error occurs.

This is one of the first things I've learned to do after installing WINDOWS.

 

[conorvansmack]

I tried repairing, but that wasn't an option and I didn't have any luck with the Recovery Console, so someone with an external enclosure is going to help me salvage my data and I'll do another fresh install. I'll be sure to disable Windows Defender (I think it was messing with bittorrent) and I'll actually read all of the updates that I dl and install this time.

 

[Rebel7254]

Originally posted by: conorvansmack
I tried repairing, but that wasn't an option and I didn't have any luck with the Recovery Console, so someone with an external enclosure is going to help me salvage my data and I'll do another fresh install.

That's exactly what I have decided to do.

The day before yesterday, my Vista installation was having trouble again. It would just hang for a long time on a black screen after the Microsoft loading screen. I brought home another hard drive from work and installed XP on it. No problems on either drive now.

I brought MY Windows XP drive to work today to see if our service tech could run some diagnostics on it, but he's on vacation this week. I'm just going to get everything I want off of it, and format/reinstall Windows XP. If it's still screwing up after that, then I know the drive is bad.

 

[Rebel7254]

Nope, same junk after format/reinstall.

Has to be a bad hard drive. It lasted about 10 months.

Any recommendations on what I should get to replace it? I've had pretty good luck with Seagate in the past, and this is the first one to die so soon on me. I guess I'll start shopping around soon. Will getting a new one with a larger buffer on it (this one is 16MB) be beneficial, or does the fact that my Vista drive is only 16MB stop me from getting any benefit? I'm not sure how all of that works. I'm rusty on my geek knowledge.....I do remember that if you had two IDE HDDs and one had slower RPM, then that would be the top speed of your faster drive. I don't know if the same goes for anything else like buffer size or if it really even matters anymore with SATA.

It seems like that there is a relationship between the drives, though. Even though I wasn't booting up from my XP hard drive at all when I loaded up Vista, it still loaded very slow. If I just unplug the bad drive, it gets into Windows nice and quick.

 

[conorvansmack]

It's still under warranty, right? See how Seagate handles this.

 

[Rebel7254]

Unfortunately, I bought it off of eBay to save some money. It was new & sealed, but Seagate plainly said on their website that they will only honor warranties for products bought from authorized Seagate retailers.

Only consumers purchasing Seagate or Maxtor products from authorized Seagate retailers or resellers may obtain coverage under our limited warranties.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Rebel7254

Only consumers purchasing Seagate or Maxtor products from authorized Seagate retailers or resellers may obtain coverage under our limited warranties.

Seagate doesn't ask for receipts when checking warranties or returning drives. Just give their wizard the serial number of the drive and see if its in warranty or not.

 

[Rebel7254]

Cool, I'll try it. Thanks.

 

[Rebel7254]

I completed the RMA process online. Looks like you're right, no receipts needed.

I did the advanced replacement option, which was $20, but that's better than shipping the bad drive to them, waiting for them to receive it, and then waiting until the replacement comes back. For $20, I get the replacement before I send the bad one back, plus prepaid packaging to put the bad one in. Worth it to me.

Unfortunately, I made a typo on the serial no., (typed "Y" instead of "6") so I sent them a support request this morning with the correct number. Hopefully that doesn't cause too much of a delay.