Help, I'm looping!!!!!

[cmputrskillme]

Hi Guys,

You are all my saviors with XP, cuz I don't know much!

Customer brought his computer over, it keeps restarting.
Put disk in to fix registry, it will not do it, says something about further damaging the disk or something. ASR won't go any further.... Can't run check disk and other things it suggests because I can't get in safe mode or a command prompt.

Is there a boot disk I can download? What the heck do I do here........I NEVER want to reformat unless all options are exhausted.

Any ideas on what I should do?

As always thanks in advance!

Sharon

[phishhead]

hey sharon does it keep restarting on the net...could be that virus. have you did a virus scan. now think of xp like win2k. almost the same deal but with a face lift. did you try doing a system scan. go to start>>>RUN>>>and type SFC /SCANNOW. then to get to a command prompt its start>>>RUN and CMD. WHY cant you boot to safe mode or a cmd prompt. and when did the problem start happening?...new software, hardware.When did it last work fine?

[cmputrskillme]

Hey Phish,

Well, it boots as far as seeing the windows screen, then restarts. I can't get to safe mode without it restarting, if I choose command prompt, it restarts....no matter what I try it keeps restarting.......I put the disk in to see if it would fix the registry.......ASR gets so far, asks for a disk which I don't have.

I have no clue what to do.....without being able to get a command prompt or safe mode, I'm SOL. Is there a boot disk, I know it doesn't come with one, can I download one?

This is a customers computer, he filled out the sheet to say that he's changed nothing other than renewing online and purchasing Norton's Anti Virus 2004 and installing it. He said it ran fine for days after that then this looping thing started.

Sharon

[Big Booger]

Reinstall over the current installation. No files will be lost, only installed programs (just reinstall them)...

That would be my only suggestion other than reformatting, if you cannot get into the machine to run a fix, or you cannot repair the installation using the ASR.

Does it give any kind of error message when it reboots? How about in safemode? Where does it hang or stop at.. as when you boot in safe mode it generally shows the DLLs and other files it loads into memory...


Check the RAM? Could be a bad stick causing the reboot? Could be a PSU problem?

Have you tried booting to the last known good configuration?

[FastGame]

Hi Sharon

Check this out http://www.techzonez.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9263

Download the ISO boot zip and burn it to CD, set first boot device in bios to CD-Rom and test the memory.

Can you give more detail on the system specs ?

[lynchknot]

How about letting it blue screen and see what it says. I installed a program that made my pc do the same thing (but kept going to blue screen). I uninstalled it and it was back to normal.

[rik]

Any updates yet? It could be a loose IDE cable, or like Boogs said a loose or bad RAM stick.
Sidenote: ASR only works if the recovery disk has been made previously. Can't just boot to the cd and run it. See if you can boot into the bios and just leave it there. If it reboots then it isn't an OS issue. Let us know what happens at that point and if further trouble shooting is needed We'll be here. :)

[cmputrskillme]

Ok here goes...........

When machine starts........black screen offers me safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, last know good.....etc. I've tried all of them.

When trying safe mode, it runs until it gets to the Windows/System32/Drivers/MVP.sys
hangs there for a sec and restarts.

When I try to run the CD to repair it, I get this big long message:

"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent further damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:

Disable or uninstall any anti-virus, disk defrag or backup utilities. Check your hard drive configuration and check for any updated drivers. Run chkdsk/f to check for hard drive corruption and then restart.

Technical Info

****stop: 0x00000024 (0x001902f8, 0xf89b8704,0xf89b8404,0xf81c6411)
****ntfs.sys - address f81c6411 base at f8158000, datestamp 3b7dc5d0

And there you have it, I don't know what any of that means up there
Reinstall over top? I haven't tried that option yet.


Bet it will restart.......... :confused:

Any ideas? I'm gonna go and get that ISO boot zip.

Thanks,
Sharon

[Conan]

Can you boot from a Windows XP CD?

[rik]

Can you boot from a Windows XP CD?

Yup, that is what needs to happen. Thanks for clarifying where the restart was happening and the stop message.
MS indicates that it is a problem with the partition and that needs to be repaired. Here (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=228888) is the link to the MS support article that leads you thru how to fix it.
Please let us know how you are doing.

[FastGame]

Yep those stop errors come in handy :)

Good job rik ;)

Good luck Sharon :D

[EcPercy]

Well if all else fails I would try just booting from the xp cd and using the repair option. If this doesn't work then the next step would be to reinstall. I know its a customers pc and reinstalling would suck, but sometimes its the only option... Keep us updated!

One other option would be to boot into recovery console and copy the ntfs.sys file from a working installation and replace the file on the corrupt system... this may allow you to boot and run other utilities to see if there are more files that need replacing of repair...

I was researchine some more and there seem to be two things that corrupt the ntfs.sys file, bad memory and/or a bad harddrive...

[Big Booger]

The above suggestions are excellent. Just to clarify what I meant when I said and install over the current installation.

Run the XP CD from the boot. Choose to install a new installation, but when it asks if you want to format, leave the current drive intact. That will overwrite the C:/windows folder but will leave everything else..

Then salvage what files you want to save. Then I'd recommend a reformat.
:D

[GraemeK]

Everyone seems to have good advice, I would try reseating all the cards & the memory chips (alhough I would expect an error beep for faulty chips) & checking the cables first, but I doubt it is this my guess is that either your hard disk is FUBAR'd or Windows is (although I find the re-booting puzzling )have you got SMART switched on? or is it not supported. Personally I would stick another hard drive in load up windows & set the old drive up as a slave get the info off of it then re-format it & start again. Keep us posted

[cmputrskillme]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all your great suggestions!

Here's an update.........

I've tried everything, still keep getting the stop error no matter what I do.

Is this hard drive toast? I can't even reformat the thing!!!!!

No way to get into this drive at all..... any ideas before I call customer and make him cry?

Thanks,
Sharon

[rik]

Sharon you should be able to boot to the XP cd and do something from there...Is that not possible?

[FastGame]

You need to pull that HD out and hook it up as slave on your computer. After you do so then go to MyComputer>right click on the bad HD>choose properties>Tools>Error checking>make sure you check both boxes *fix errors & recover bad sectors*

After you checkdisk the HD see if it'll boot, if not then try booting from the XP CD and do a repair. If that doesn't work then get a new HD.

I've had a couple of HD's that you would think were toast, after running Checkdisk a few times on them they worked. These were blank HD's that wouldn't format because of the bad sectors.

Good luck :)

[cmputrskillme]

Rik, any option tried from the cd goes to stop error, safe mode, command prompt, repair, new installation last know good, I've tried every option to my disposal. I'm thinking its impossible at this point. Hmmm, Fastgame, ya have a point and I didn't think of that and I will commence doing that right now! Will keep you posted. Be Back Soon!

Thanks a million!
Sharon

[rik]

If the partitions are shot to a point that it errors even when working from the cd, that is strange. and unfortunately you may not be able to recover from that. Once you have tried FastGames suggestions, and if it still does not work, I am including 2 links to instructions on how to run debug scripts to wipe out the partition information. The instructions are specifically for Win98 on a FAT partition but I would think that it would work on XP as well. I'm just not sure that the scripts will wipe the NTFS partitions or not as I have not had to o this far to get one working...yet :)

The first link is to a decription page from FDisk.com and gives a decription of what to do and how to run it etc. The 2nd link is straight to the script to be run. IF you have to go this far just follow the directions exactly and all should be fine.
First page (http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/HardDrive.htm)

Script Only (http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/clr-part.txt)

*Debug Scripts compliments of www.fdisk.com*