Infinite Reboot in Win2000

Recently (20 mins ago) I upgraded my DirectX to the most recent version, BUT now when I reboot, win2000 tries to check the drive because it says it found errors. Unfortunately, it tries for a bit then the screen flicks on and off a few times and it reboots again. This happens continuously (i.e. can't boot back to win2000).

So, I tried booting into Safe mode, but then it got as far as the login screen and then locked up.

Sooo, I tried choosing the VGA option from the F8 menu at boot time and finally got in. I tried running a check on C: drive, but it cannot do it when I am running windows and asks me if I want to try at reboot. Of course this will just go into a loop again.

Is there NO Scandisk available anymore in Win2000?
In any event, how can I get windows to 'fix' itself without going into an infinite reboot loop?

Once again, the checkdisk loops at boot time, and I can't get in through Safe mode?

Thx,

 

OK, so far...

I booted to the Recovery Console and ran 'chkdsk /r' and it fixed the files.
I also went into the 'Startup and Recovery' options and UNchecked the 'Automatically reboot' setting in the 'System Failure' section so that I could see WHY the system was crashing (so the reboot was just a symptom of the crash).

The ACTUAL crash message was:

*****
STOP: C000026c {unable to load device driver}
\??\c:\winnt\system32\win32k.sys device driver could not be loaded.
Error status was 0xc0000221
Beginning dump of Physical memory.
Contact system administrator or technical support group.
*****

THEN, I used win2000 for a bit and after about 10 minutes it crashed again with the same message. This is happening continuously after about the same amount of time, after each reboot.

What does this message mean? Is there something wrong with the 'win32k.sys' file? Is it something else?

Thanks for any info.

 

If you check device manager you'll probably see which device isn't happy with it's driver(s).

Try start~run~sfc /scannow to see if there are system files that need fixing.

After that, reapply your most recent service pack.

 

Well, I went to MS's site and did a search for which upgrades I needed and it found a bunch, but said it had to run the IE one first (I had IE5 from the original win2000 cd). SO, I ran that update and it worked for IE (to v6) BUT then stopped when trying to update Outlook Express with this error:

*****
Digital Signature not found
The sw you are about to install does not contain an MS signature. There is no guarantee it will work correctly with windows:
Microsoft Outlook Express 5
*****


Then when I clicked OK it stopped the upgrade. Why could it not upgrade the Outlook Express that came with the cd along with IE5? It's part of the same package??

In any event, as I searched their Knowledge base for any clues the system crashed again with this error:

*****
STOP: 0x00000050 (0xe2cda4aq, 0x00000001)
***Adress bd76e720 base at b076e000,
datestamp 3e7a99d9 - nv4_disp.dll
*****


I tried running Chkdsk again from the Console after booting from cd but now when I reboot, I continuously get the first error again (C000026c {unable to load device driver}) and can't get windows 2000 to finish booting.

How can I login now to even attempt to fix the problem? I even tried booting up with VGA mode from the F8 boot menu but get stopped with the same crash error. Do I have to completely reinstall win2000?

Thanks for any info.

 

Mike - there may be other ways to fix the thing but I think if it were mine, I'd blow it away and start fresh. OS & SP3.

Probably not the answer you wanted but I'm afraid that this box will just find new and improved ways to drive you nuts if you manage to "fix" the current problem. DirectX updates gone bad are a real horror story most times.

But I'd download and install BigFix and use it to manage updates rather than letting M$ do the deed. It will only manage system and security patches for the most part but it will certainly do those well.

 

Well, I tried expanding the file and then rebooting but that didn't help, still crashed with same error. So on a whim I tried recovering with the ERD disk I had created (but didn't want to use because I had created just before the crash). It stoppped at one point saying it couldn't recover a new file : shell32.dll. SO, I tried recovering again but WITHOUT the ERD and this time it recovered fine. Then after rebooting got into windows ok. Guess I should have tried that first.

I got the win2000 SP3 to work, but when I tried to install the 24 other security patches that windows update found, it downloaded for a while, then gave me a window saying that it couldn't install them. Didn't say why or anything, just gave me a list of which weren't installed, which was all of them. There are also 8 other specific win2000 patches it found, but I'm not even bothering with them for now.

SO now I'm wondering WHY these 24 security patches won't install and am ready to give up on them as well as the otehr 8.

What I DO want to do is install the IE6 update but outlook express has disappeared from my machine. I have the outlook issue open in another thread under IE/OE.