Windows Vista Vista booting halts at the yello progress bar.

I have HP laptop with vista home preinstalled. When I turn it on, the booting halts at the yellow progress bar stage (The screen which has a single progress bar and Microsoft's copyright information is written under this bar). I left it in this stage overnight but nothing happened. When tried to boot in safe mode, it loads upto "crcdisk.sys" and then halts there.
I searched for a solution at google and found in some forum, instructions to rename the files "%systemroot%\system32\drivers\pcmcia.sys" and "%systemroot%\system32\driverstore\filerepository\pcmcia.sys*******" (i don't remember the name exactly). I could not find the second file, but there was some folder with similar name. I renamed the file, backed up and deleted the specified folder using the setup boot partition using command prompt but it did no difference. I undid the changes and now can not get any solution.
Please suggest me any solution. I don't want to format or reinstall OS.
Thanks.

 

There is a lot of differing information relating to this problem. The PCMCIA "fix" dates back to the beta version of Vista.

Other things you may want to check. Disconnect any USB drives (devices).

Check in the BIOS/startup configuration settings. Set it to "defaults" save and exit. Some suggest changing ACHI to ATA if the BIOS has that setting. Look for a setting "Quick Boot ", "Quick POST" or "Quick Start ", disable it until the system is stable. Laptops no longer seem to have a backup battery to save the BIOS settings, so if you remove the system battery or it goes very flat the settings can be lost (or I think, corrupted), because the system is set to bypass full POST, incorrect settings can be made. If there is the option "Autodetect Hard Disk Drive" or I have seen HDD "diagnostics" in HP BIOSes, run those.

Matt

 

Another suggestion.

Go to the HP website, look up your model and get any driver updates manually. Don't rely on Windows Updates or an "automatic" driver updater at HP.

Matt

 

Thanks Arie and Mattman for your replies. HP laptops have an automatic startup correction program, which runs from the setup partition. I ran that program. After several minutes of working, it returned with the message that something is wrong with the startup and the program can not fix it. I already used the "Set to default values" in BIOS but it did no difference. I tried to use system restore, but it failed with an error something like this.. "A file can not be created if file is already existing ". As mattman suggested me to look for any driver update, how can I install or uninstall programs from command prompt as this is the only way (which I know, and I know that I know very little) to access the system in this condition.
As Arie has suggested, I would try chkdsk and try to look for the settings suggested by Mattman. Should I post the boot log file (ntbtlog.txt) to help you people understand the situation well?
Waiting for replies..
Rohan

 

Sorry, the driver suggestion was more for preventative maintenance when you get back to a working system.

Have you tried Arie's suggestion of running CHKDSK from the command prompt? The command should be
chkdsk C: /r

As you can see, the HP recovery system is different from a retail version of Vista. You will need to read the manual or look up recovery options for your system at the HP website.

My suggestion was to make certain the HDD is properly identified in the BIOS. Again, read about the BIOS settings in the manual. There should be options to disable hardware controllers there, so if it might be related to the PCMCIA, try disabling the PCMCIA controller and see if Windows starts. Other "fixes" talk about USB, so try disabling the USB controller.

CHKDSK /r seems to have worked in a lot of cases, so try that first.

Matt

 

Hello Matt, I tried CHKDSK with same parameters as you wrote. Although it found some errors in file system and repaired it including some bad clusters in hyberfile.sys, but again there was no change in condition.
This system has Phoenix Bios Ver F.23 and has the option for Primery HDD self Test. I ran this test which continued in two phases, one the quick test and the other exhaustive test. The quick test passed and after completion of the other test, there was a "Test Status: #10009 - Replace Hard Disk" message. I could not understand this message.
The report of the automatic startup test is as follows..

Code:

Problem Signatures
Problem Event Name     Startup Repair V2
Problem Signature 01: Autofailover
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6000.16386
Problem Signature 03: 6
Problem Signature 04: 983054
Problem Signature 05: Bad Driver
Problem Signature 06: Bad Driver
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 3
Problem Signature 09: wrp repair
Problem Signature 10: 2
OS Ver      6.0.6000.2.0.0.2561
Locale ID   1033

Now here is an important progress. As Arie wrote that this might be the problem related to Cyclic Redundancy Check, I renamed the file CRCDISK.SYS to CRCDISK.OLD and surprisingly system booted successfully in SAFE MODE and SAFE MODE WITH COMMAND PROMPT but not in normal mode. Now I used System Restore to restore the system to 10 days back when some windows update was automatically installed. Now, the restore program has got back the CRCDISK.SYS file and still the system is booting successfully in SAFE MODE but not in Normal Mode. Now please tell me what I should do next?
Thanking you..
Rohan

 

Hyberfile.sys is the file that holds the system imformation during hibernation. You can delete it, apparently either by using Disk Cleanup or turning off hibernation then manually deleting it.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;928897

After you delete Hyberfile.sys, I would run CHKDSK /r again, this time it should not need to try to save any data and be able to mark the clusters as bad. Now that you have bad clusters, any HDD diagnostics will tell you that the disk is damaged and suggest it be replaced. The region of bad clusters will grow over time, you can run CHKDSK on a regular basis to try and keep any new bad clusters getting marked as bad. I have one drive that has damage and I repartitioned the drive to leave the damaged section in free space on the disk.

You could not "trust" that an important file will not get written to the damaged disk area again. Me, I would consider getting a new HDD, taking the old HDD out and putting it into an external drive enclosure (it will be a 2.5" and probably SATA).

Read about making a set of recovery optical disks in the HP information. You could try cloning the old HDD to the new one, and you may be able to use the HDD manufacturer's setup utilities (eg., for Seagate and Maxtor it is the program DiskWizard), if you put the old drive into an external enclosure. You will need to clone the whole HDD so that the recovery partition is copied across as well. The old drive could then become backup (don't write any large backup files to it in case they become corrupted in the bad sectors, just leave the files as "decompressed ").

If the damage is isolated to where the Hyberfile.sys is located and you delete it and repair the clusters, don't run a defragmentation until you backup your system.

A maybe on how the damage was caused. The system was put into hibernation and before the hyperfile.sys was finished being written to the HDD, the laptop had a "bump ". If you put it into hibernation, be careful it has finished writing to the drive before moving it.

You have done well getting to Safe Mode, but next step I think is to make plans in case of a total system failure.

Matt

 

Hello Matt. I tried CHKDSK again after deleting hyberfile.sys. Nothing happened after this as well. Does this mean that I must recover my system using backups and be prepared for this type of problem in future if I don't change my HDD? Is there not any way to pinpoint and correct the problem without recovering or reinstalling OS?
Thanks,
Rohan

 

Rohan, as far as the HDD goes, the writing is on the wall. CHKDSK can mark the clusters as bad, but it will continue to get worse and whatever files are written to those clusters will get corrupted.

My first priority would be to back up the data and as I said I would prefer to do that on a new HDD. The old HDD will still run but it is no longer reliable.

After the backup, you can start to do some "adjustments" and be confident that you can get back to the same place or not lose your data.

Getting to Safe Mode is a good sign. The "Problem Signatures" talk about drivers, so look in Device Manager for any problems listed. Where and how HP keep the original drivers, I don't know, you will need to research that. You can try a System Restore to an earlier point in time.

Basic drivers in Safe Mode are now running, so the problem would be with higher level drivers (or software that control the drivers) that stops you from getting to normal mode.

In Help and Support look up "Using System Configuration ". It tells you about the methods you can use.

I expect it should be a matter of uninstalling the problem drivers or software in safe mode, getting to normal mode and reinstalling them. The HP recovery system may restrict how you can do this.

There are forums at the HP website, we can only help so far concerning OEM systems (for example most MS information just says "Run Startup Repair ", your system doesn't seem to have that though).

Matt