Windows XP Refuses to Boot

Hi everyone,

I came home from work today to find that my machine won't boot. I fortunately have a dual boot with Windows 2k so I can use it like I am now. Let me explain.

I have (had) Windows XP Pro installed on my 300gig hard drive and it is a master on a controller card. I also have an 80gig and 20gig hard drive as slaves (Windows 2k is on the 80 and a screen at startup prompts which to use).

When I select Windows XP, num lock goes on and the computer just sits there on a blank screen. I can't turn num lock off or any other key light. No activity, it just sits. Booting in safe mode reveals that the machine just sits at this:

multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\CONFIG\SYSTEM.LOG

I let it sit for a good 15 minutes but it just sits.

Is there any way I can somehow bypass the use of this log or fix it and not lose my data on my 300gig? My dual boot of Win2k could never read the 300gig so I can't tell if it's intact or not, but during booting I can see my two IDE slaves and when my controller card loads I see the 300gig there.

Please help me and I appreciate any help I get.

 

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Usually when a safe mode boot hangs, it shows what it wanted to do after the step that failed so the System Log entry is almost certainly not your problem.

Can you boot XP to 'last known good configuration'?

If not, try booting from your XP install CD and doing chkdsk x: /r (where x: is whatever partition you have the XP system files loaded on).

If 2K can't 'see' the XP drive then you most likely didn't not set up a dual boot system. XP has a later version of NTFS but a regular dual boot load will update the version 2K is using so they can work together.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I can't boot into XP at all. Last Known Config does the same thing.

When I was in XP, it could see all three drives, while 2k can only see itself and the other, but not the master with XP on it. I never bothered to figure out why, but I guess I should have.

I've been doing some searching, would a Repair Install fix this and keep my data intact? Also, would it preserve my boot screen; right now I have it ask me which to boot from (Xp or 2k)? If that was gone, I wouldn't even be able to get into 2k and my machine will be unusable.

I will attempt that chkdsk c: /r when I find my XP disc, which hopefully will be soon! How do I boot into the DOS prompt with the disc, and would doing that mess up my data or my ability to get into 2k?

 

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

 

When you boot from your install CD, you want to go into the recovery console. The screen is black with white letters and looks like an old style DOS screen but it is actually a very stripped down XP screen. XP does not use DOS for anything.

chkdsk /r should check your files and drive surface for errors and correct what it finds. Usually no data loss involved since the pieces it sees as bad are trash. Once in a great while the utility goofs and deletes some good stuff but I can only remember it happening once to me in 10 years and lots of machines.

A chkdsk run on a partition will have no effect on another partition so it will not do anything to 2K.

If the chkdsk doesn't help you are probably looking at a repair install. These too are not supposed to cause any data loss but sometimes they do - more often than chkdsk in fact. But the reality here is you have nothing now so you aren't likely to make things worse.

 

I booted up the CD and went to the repair console, but sadly it didn't find my 300gig master, only my 80gig (with 2k) and my old 20gig.

So I guess this isn't a good sign...

Would doing a Repair install even work here?

 

One odd thing to note:

My master 300gig with XP is on a controller card (since my mobo can't support the big drive). This leads to some complications. My current boot sequence is floppy then SCSI (for controller card). If I want to use the XP CD I change it to CD then SCSI and it doesn't see the controller card HD, only my two regular IDE ones.

This is probably why the repair console failed to see the XP install.... Does anyone know how I can fix this? Perhaps at the CD boot, load those third party controller things...

 

Did you have to load drivers for the card from a floppy to do the install?