WinXP Home refuses to boot properly

[satoshi]

OK, most recent minidump sent. Here, this is interesting:
Error Statistics
I started recording what was happening and it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be, but it's still an issue...

 

[satoshi]

Ah! The most recent boot up took 13 times! I dunno if this is a sign that it's getting worse or not. Did ya get anything out of the minidump I sent ya yet, smilin?

 

[satoshi]

Originally posted by: Smilin
You'll have to forgive me a bit. I never deal with the home version of XP but this should all apply anyway:

You can do a "repair" of the current installation. This will swap out all the files in your windows\system32 folder with ones from your original CD but leave all subfolders alone which preserves your registry, start menu etc. You'll have to re-run all service packs and critical hotfixes and in rare circumstances it can cause some problems especially if some other software like CD-burning software has changed a system32 file.

It would be nicer to actually find out what that bugcheck is and just fix it. If you can get the bugcheck info I can tell you what to do.
To get a bugcheck you can do one of several things:
1. Do a parallel install...just do a full install from CD but specify a folder other that C:\windows (Yes it's safe to do in the same partition). Boot to the new install, open the system hive from the damaged registry (C:\windows\system32\config\system) with regedit and change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl\AutoReboot to 0x00000000 then reboot to the damaged install and wait for the bluescreen. Post the first 4 lines here in the forum.
2. Use the recovery console (boot with a 2000 CD/XP Pro CD to get there) and grab the most recent file from c:\windows\minidump. The file is 64k and should fit on a floppy so you can email it. Private message me for the address.

Something you might want to check: boot to a recovery console and see if you have write permissions to the root of C: ...just rename a file and then back again to check. This is a pretty common bugcheck that occurs at the portion of boot you are describing. If you were able to successfully copy over ntldr and ntdetect this probably won't apply though.

Just a word of warning to all you folks out there:
Don't use FIXMBR or Fdisk /mbr casually on a damaged drive. If you are missing the end of sector marker on sector 0 and you run one of these you'll just notice a lot of disk activity as it zero's out every byte on your drive! It takes rare circumstances but it can happen.

Satoshi, If you have a free Microsoft support incident that came with your OS now would be a good time to use it. I'm not sure what the hold times are like for the home users but once you get through they'll stay with you until it's fixed.

If you can get to that stop code or get me a copy of a memory dump I can get you working. If not, the repair mentioned above is a reasonably good route to take...if it works in "home".

Smilin

Yay... I did the parallel installation of XP and loaded the hive and changed the auto reboot (it was under ControlSet002, there was no CurrentControlSet, though there is in the parallel installation of XP...) from 1 to 0. I reboot, and what do I get? A message saying that the registry is corrupt or missing. Now what?

 

[Smilin]

I looked at your memory dump, it's pretty clean-cut but you've discovered the same thing in the meantime it seems:

This error occurs if a necessary registry hive file cannot be loaded. Usually this means the file is corrupt or is missing.
In rare instances, this error can be caused by a driver that has corrupted the registry image in memory, or by a memory error in this region.

The official fix:

Try running the Emergency Recovery Disk (ERD) and allow the system to repair any errors that it detects. If the problem is a missing or corrupt registry file, this will usually fix the problem.

If you don't have an ERD, you can still run an emergency repair and let it find your hives from the last time you did a system state backup. If you haven't ever run one of those the best you can do is use the parallel install to back your data up and reload. This is probably unrelated to your Linux install, just a coincidence so don't let your Mom kill you

 

[Smilin]

Possibly good news for you satoshi...

If you can get it booted again, go here:

http://oca.microsoft.com/resredir.asp?sid=83&State=1

Disclaimer: the above link is ONLY for satoshi, I deliberately did not make it clickable. Satoshi, just cut and paste the above.