Computer won't boot: "A problem has been detected...."

OK, did that and it got me to a window that lists several boot options:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last Known Good Configuration
Start Windows Normally

I pressed Pause to hold the process there while I await further instructions.

 

Punch "Safe Mode" and cross your fingers. I don't mean it will do any harm, just may leave you disappointed. Good luck.

 

Punching Safe Mode very quickly got me to that same familiar BSOD. I have to admit I forgot to cross my fingers.

 

That's what I was afraid of. You've exhausted all of the easy stuff so you can either try some harder things like, unplugging all peripheral cards and hardware and trying to boot. Trying a "repair install" (no personal data loss)and seeing if it still crashes in the process. If none of that works, you'll be down to needing a spare HD for a test or else cart the tower down to a shop for some bench work.

I think we've hit the wall here but I welcome anyone with any fresh ideas.

 

I thought we'd pretty much eliminated hardware problems being the cause, apart from the HDD itself. Wrong?

"I welcome anyone with any fresh ideas." -- I do, too!!

 

I'm not so sure about that...Read this and it may change your thinking. That's why I said, we've tried all the easy stuff so normally when you aren't findin' the trouble where yer lookin', look elsewhere. I'm leaning toward hardware but would still try a Repair Install before anything else.

 

You had hard errors on the hard disk. When a drive goes bad any fix is often short-lived.

Follow my earlier advice about contacing the Tech Support at the drive manufacturer; and then Tech Support at the computer manufacturer. In my opinion you have a valid Warranty claim.

In the interim, since it appears you have a valid XP reinstallation CD. Reinstall XP on your F: drive, leaving your original installation on Drive C alone. Answer any prompt from the reinstallation on F by hitting the return key to accept the defaults. When in doubt, just hit the enter key.

If we can manage a "parallel install" of XP, it gives us a lot of room to handle your issue, including moving needed data files from the system.

 

I put the reinstall CD in the drawer and started it, but it wants to install XP in C:\. Where do I start from and what command(s) do I use to get XP to install in F:\? So far all the options that have appeared are rigid choices with seemingly no way of editing them to point the install to F:\.

Isn't the Windows XP that's already in F:\ a parallel install? I'd copied it from C:\ not too long ago just so I would have a usable version of it on the CD in case the one in C:\ got corrupted. That seems to be what we want to do now. But so far I haven't found a way to get at that folder to make use of it. Will installing a new version of it overwrite that copy? The one already on F:\ is an SP2 version and there are lots of updates in that folder now. A new installation would be the original version circa 2002. Go ahead and do it anyway?

 

The F: install is not a parallel install, apparently.

Plan F:

Follow exactly these instructions, as we are going to repair in the Windows install on drive C: and not Drive F:
"No-reformat, non-Destructive, Total Rebuild of Windows XP "
by Fred Langa, illustrated:
http://www.informationweek.com/show...0KVUKAQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=189400897

 

Good news! I think the install worked! The computer is now at the Desktop, and it looks like it used to, icons and all. I haven't done anything on it yet, because the next few steps are probably important and I want to make sure I do the right things in the right sequence.

Which should I do first?

1. Update Windows XP? (I'm probably running the original version, pre SP1 and SP2.)

2. Update my malware programs (NAV, Ad-Aware, Spybot, ZA)?

3. Backup personal data?

4. Backup any system stuff?

I'm not touching anything until I get recommendations on those questions.

During the reinstall, a few error messages popped up. One of them was for the Intel Storage Driver (IndChnDr.sys). That's a file that NAV was getting stuck on repeatedly so I deleted it. I had a backup copy of it in F:\, though, and drilled down to it and was able to recover it. Some other error messages appeared later, but I bypassed them (clicked "OK "), and will now wait to see if I need to recover them somehow.

I'll tell you something. Someone who has never been through what I have during the past few days would never imagine how lovely one's Desktop display, with all those pretty icons, would seem after a successful repair.

A great big Thank You to everyone who helped me through it all. I look forward to seeing what you advise regarding the steps I should take next (see questions, above).

 

It would be most important to backup your personal data to separate media before doing anything else. From that point forward, it's a matter of choice as to whether you prefer to battle an out of date system that may be flawed or instead do a clean install of XP SP2. It may be that you need to "borrow" a later version of the XP install CD for that purpose. There are other options as well but that's the easiest if available.

My personal choice would be to buy a second hard drive, install a clean copy of XP SP2 on it and then slave the existing drive to it for data recovery. Then continue to use it for storage if it proves to be dependable.

It's your money/choice at this point. Do the backup first though.

Best regards.

BTW:

Are you sure that isn't IdeChnDr.sys , which would be an Intel Accelerator driver file that you should get an update for? That may be the core issue of your initial problem.

 

oops, double post.

 

SD2:

From the first post, it was IdeChnDr.sys and it was stated that that file had been "deleted ". Perhaps its speculative and at this point its academic but that has been my suspicion all along.

 

Update: The good news:
The computer hasn't crashed or shown a BSOD yet.
I've burned CD's with all the documents, databases, photos, and the Netscape stuff (Address Book, Bookmarks, custom.dic, and the Mail folder).
I updated the malware programs, but I'd already done that only about a week ago, so no major change there.
That's the good news.

The remainder of the news:
The Windows XP install disk I used contains a pre-SP1 version of XP, so I need to update to XP2. Trouble is, MS uses only Internet Explorer for downloads and I can't get my IE 7.0 to open. This error message appears:
iexplore.exe -- Entry Point Not Found
The procedure entry point SHRegGetValueW could not be located in the dynamic link library SHLWAPI.dll.
I did a search in C:\ for that file and located 22 items. Then did a search in F:\ and found 10 items there. No idea what to do with them. So I downloaded and installed IE 6.0. Same result. Using Netscape I found a site where I could download SP2, did so and ran it. After about 30 minutes a little window appeared: "Service Pack 2 installation did not complete. Windows XP has been partially updated and may not work properly." Then I looked in partition F:\, where I have a folder called SP2 which contains an I386 folder as well as an XPSP2 file. Tried installing that, and after another 30 minutes got the same failure message. So I'm trapped. I can't update XP to SP2 and I can't get MS IE to open.

Yesterday: At one point during the reinstallation of WinXP, a window opened telling me it couldn't find IdeChnDr.sys, an Intel application accelerator driver. There was a Browse button and I drilled down into F:\ and found it, entered that location and the installation continued. I understand that's a version that Intel no longer supports, so today I dowloaded and installed an updated version.

Later this message appeared:
COM+ Setup Error
Sub-component COM+ raised an exception while processing the OC_COMPLETE_INSTALLATION setup message.
d:\nt\com\com 1x\src\complussetup\comsetup\csetuputil.cpp (line 3406)
Error Code = ox8007007f
The specified procedure could not be found.
Failed to load the library "C:\WINDOWS\System32\catsrv.dll ".
Any significance to that?

At another point there was a Device installer error: "Windows could not load the installer for Tape Controller. Contact your hardware vendor for assistance." There's no tape device in my system, so I clicked the "OK" botton and went ahead.

There were 4 other error alerts, all starting with "An error occurred loading..." for
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\directdb.dll
C:\WINDOWS\System32\inetcomm.dll
C:\Program Files\OutlookExpress\msoe.dll
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\wab32.dll
And they all ended with "The file may not have been installed or it has been corrupted." There was an "OK" box for each of them, and I clicked it and the installation proceeded.

Any signficance to any of the above details?

Today I found a copy of Vbox in my Recyle Bin that I'd deleted early in the sequence of problems with NAV, and I restored it.

Right now the system works, at least it isn't crashing, but I'd like to find out how to get SP2 to install, and I'd like to get IE to open. Should I pursue those issues here or open a new thread in a different forum?

 

Just a suggestion (and not to disrupt the flow of this thread) - use another computer to download SP2 to a CD and then use that to install it on your system. Here's a link to the full download of SP2 (266 mB): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...BE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en

Here's a link to a lot of good information on SP2 installs: http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=45

 

usasma: The version of SP2 your link leads to is exactly the same file as one of those I tried to install. And it didn't work, either. But the link is a good source, should I need to get the file again.

As for installing SP2, for some unknown reason the straightforward way doesn't work. Too bad I wasn't aware of the "/integrate switch" option when I installed Win XP. That might have made a difference.

Although my system still works after a fashion, some problems remain. The two most serious are not being able to install SP2, and MS IE (both v6.0 and 7.0) refusing to open. I'm going to open new threads in the appropriate forums to try to get those problems licked. This thread has been running too long to get much response now.

(By the way, I like your signature.)

 

Bobbo

I have been having exactly the same problems as you have.

When I got up this morning I decided to stop trying to fix. I got out my trusty XP Pro disk and started over. I have just finished installing SP2 and all later updates and my computer is working better than ever.

Good luck...

 

Bmoore1129: I wish I had your luck. I did an install of XP (HE) just a couple days ago. It's what's running now and it's what I can't get SP2 to finish installing in. (Read a few of the posts above yours for the particulars of that.) Any ideas how your install was done differently than mine?

 

My computer is not a branded one. I built it myself so I have a disk (pre SP1). I have my 2 WD drives (40 gig) partitioned into 8 partitions with operating system and programs on C:. All things created are on my other partitions so I don't have to worry about losing stuff.

I booted into the XP disk and install Windows as if there had never been anything thing on the C drive. I used the full NTSF format and the install went perfectly. I then installed my MB drivers then SP2. When I got all the stuff on it that I could live with, I activated XP by phone call. (for some reason, my install disk never asks for the 25 digit #'s until I go to activate). I did a disk clean with ccleaner and a defrag and made an Acronis image of my C: drive.

I was having the same BSOD you were (0x07B) except my second set was 0xf789e528. After I did the XP repair it booted fine and worked fine until I attempted to do SP2.

It would look like the install was going fine until right at the end it would throw up one of those cute little info boxes that programmers sit around and snicker about that said "Access denied" with only an OK box to check. (May they rot in Hell). Checking that made the SP2 install reverse itself and the I could never boot again. It would go to the XP screen with the little blue progress bars marching to the right and BSOD with 0x071 and the rest were all 0x0's.

I woke up at 6am yesterday morning and started from scratch and now my language has toned back down to mixed company level.

Short cuts seldom work as I have learned. The hard way usually ends up being the short cut.

 

Just to further muddy the waters, here's a link on how to "slipstream" SP2 into your XP installation CD - so that you'll install an SP2 version rather than first installing XP, then upgrading to SP2.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp
http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=49