Windows will not boot, not even to safe mode

[spitfire-ian]

Just had a problem with a laptop at work. Windows will not boot. It gets to the Windows XP splash screen then restarts. Second time round it obviously gives you the option to boot in Safe Mode. Whichever option is selected it just gets so far then restarts back into the "Start windows in Safe Mode" screen.

Any ideas?

[BliarOut]

First port of call is usually to boot into the recovery console and run a scandisk. Might take a few runs through to get it to complete. If 'doze says it's too fubared to repair, don't believe it as it is a pathological liar. Keep scanning till it eventually gets to 100% and see how it behaves then.

[spitfire-ian]

Cheers for that. That was going to be my first action but as my disks were at home I didn't know if anyone had similar experience with the problem. Will give it a go now.

[spitfire-ian]

Arse, I think it's fubar.

Pressed "R" to enter the recovery console and tah dah... blue screen

[BliarOut]

Boot from a Windows CD and enter the recovery console that way. Sounds like corruption to me.

[ThePassenger]

Aye, CD boot recovery console.
if it gives you the thumbs up try a repair installation over the top of the existing one.

it... might work well enough to allow you to drag the data off the machine before blitzing it.

[spitfire-ian]

BliarOut said:

Boot from a Windows CD and enter the recovery console that way. Sounds like corruption to me.

That's what I was doing when it blue screened...

*** STOP: 0x00000024 (0x001902FE, 0xF89B1814, 0xF89B1510, 0xF812F1FC)
*** ntfs.sys - Address F812F1FC base at F8122000, DateStamp 41107eea

[BliarOut]

Can you fit the laptop drive in a caddy and slave it off a workstation to chkdsk it? I've seen that fix a lot of probs in the past.

A Knoppix boot CD or similar could be another alternative to let you see if the data is still there.

[sneakyneil]

Try booting the machine off a linux live CD, ubuntu live or freespire or something. I've had great sucess reading NTFS paritions that windows wouldn't touch that way.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD


eta, thats just to get the files off it - dump them to USB stick or over the network or something. Then reinstall XP with a full format (not a quick one). Any jip, bin it.

Edited by sneakyneil on Thursday 19th April 15:09

[ALawson]

Same thing happened to me after getting BB and doing 4 years of updates, just re booted of windows disk. I think it was IE7 that caused the problem.

[spitfire-ian]

BliarOut said:

Can you fit the laptop drive in a caddy and slave it off a workstation to chkdsk it? I've seen that fix a lot of probs in the past.

A Knoppix boot CD or similar could be another alternative to let you see if the data is still there.

sneakyneil said:

Try booting the machine off a linux live CD, ubuntu live or freespire or something. I've had great sucess reading NTFS paritions that windows wouldn't touch that way.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD


eta, thats just to get the files off it - dump them to USB stick or over the network or something. Then reinstall XP with a full format (not a quick one). Any jip, bin it.

Edited by sneakyneil on Thursday 19th April 15:09

Thanks for both those suggestions, that looks like the way I will have to head. I was hoping not to have the joy of taking a laptop apart

[LordLanky]

STOP: Before you rebuild!

I've had a number of machines like this.
Boot of CD (built with a defrag tool in it) and defragment the primary drive (c.

[ThePassenger]

LordLanky said:

STOP: Before you rebuild!

I've had a number of machines like this.
Boot of CD (built with a defrag tool in it) and defragment the primary drive (c.

Any idea how fragmentation can cause ntfs.sys to go banjo?

[sadako]

What laptop is it? Does it have a SATA hard drive? Last time I ran into something sounding like this the image was for a laptop running SATA legacy mode because the build at work doesnt support it yet. The laptop had somehow reverted (end user did it) back to default bios settings and turned on SATA native mode and it all went to hell. Took us a few days to notice what was causing it until I had a conversation with the guy who made the build:

"I tried installing from a windows CD to rule out a hardware problem. It worked fine, although we had to dig up a USB floppy drive from IT security to load the SATA raid driver thanks to someone pinching our one."

"Wait you needed to load a raid driver?"

"Yes, Its SATA, Windows needs it to install"

"Hangon, the PXE build wont work on SATA, we've been using legacy mode. We're changing the BIOS settings before they get shipped to you."

"...and you didnt think to tell us this when you started sending us the new model?"

Edited by sadako on Thursday 19th April 21:19