• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

XP borked after bios hang- Please help

V

vanvock

Senior member
The system is an Abit KN8 AMD Athlon board w/ XP home SP2. The problem happened in preparation for a memory upgrade. In BIOS which was set to manual I changed it to SPD so that when I changed the mem it would boot to the mem specs. When I did the save & exit it hung up w/ 1 long repeated beep & would not re-boot. The pwr switch or re-set switch did nothing so I switched off the pwr supply. The next attempt had same result so I cleared CMOS, got back in BIOS & changed it to the auto setting (with which I had not seen before on other boards) & it booted to windows which was finding new hardware which I cancelled out of & desk top was different. I shut down again, changed mem & rebooted to same XP condition w/ new mem recognized OK. Then I rebooted changed BIOS date & windows is still screwed, no restore points even in safe mode, shortcuts don't work, dll's borked, & shows ordinal 450,481, &309 can't be located when trying to open system restore. Is there any hope?

EDIT: It seems that the system is running from a bacup that I had on partition E which no longer shows up in my computer. Checking system restore settings shows E as the system disk not C as it should be. I guess it messed up the boot.ini file. Would a repair install fix that?
 
Last edited:
Double check you have the correct date and time entered in the BIOS. IF the year if off it can cause problems. Should have left the RAM settings alone and smopped the RAM out. The board would have seen the change and set the RAm to auto on its own.
 
Thanks but I tried that as noted to no avail. I guess I should have done that before booting windows the first time. I had never seen that option before it was always manual or by SPD which should have set it according to RAM specs.
 
Last edited:
Try a repair install of XP using your install disk. When its done loading tell it to install XP. It will detect that you have it installed already and ask if you want to rpair it or continue with a fresh install. Choose to repair and taht should get things back to normal. Unless of course the odd memory settings cause some none system files to become currupted.
 
I've never done that before, will it cause it to loose stuff added since the install or just re-do windows stuff? I found a Drive Image XML backup but it's from awhile back & I'd like to stay current if at all possible. I also have a backup on an external Maxtor OneTouch III but I'm not sure of it's integrity. When I ran it it showed a screen that said it was complete & successful but the taskbar icon was red meaning that it was not. The files show up but I'm just not sure if I can trust it. Thanks.
 
It will repair any system files it finds that are bad and nothing else will be touched. The first screen after it loads will have a repair option. Don't go with that one. Choose to istall and it will check the drive and find the current install. Then you choose the repair option.
 
I tried loading via the setup icon & got more ordinal missing messages & one saying the installed version is newer than the one on the disk but they are both sp2.


EDIT: The original is sp1 so I'll have to slipstream a new disc.

EDIT: It has 2 hard drives & the boot priority was swapped in BIOS,changed that & it helped but it's not right yet. I guess I'll check what channels they are on next.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top