Need help with BSOD on Win XP

S

SBMongoos

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 22, 2001
Messages
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Getting this message at boot up which I cannot narrow down: A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. Stop: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x898A0020, 0x898A0194, 0x805D1658)

Screenshot (so so pic from phone cam):
0315120937.jpg
. Cannot get past this point.

Helping a neighbor with her PC. Seems nothing has been tampered with but who knows. I'm pretty sure I have ERUNT installed and have thought about using a boot disk to boot up and then drill down to where it is on the disk and see about restoring the registry. Not confident this well help however.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
Try booting with Last Known Good Configuration.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307852
Click to expand...

No luck. When selecting this option it reboots back to the same menu.

I did restore the registry using ERUNT. That seemed to have helped but I've seen Windows XP lock up twice. I ran chkdsk /f at boot and all seemed to go well. The results went by so fast I did not get to see if there were issues.

At this point just rebooted back into Windows and let it run a while to finish whatever loads after logging in. The registry restore seems to have worked but I'm wondering if they have malware or something else. Will check back after the PC sits for a bit. Cannot sit and watch it so will have to go back and check.
 
Lord Nassirbannipal said:
Also try sfc /scannow
Click to expand...

Can you do this in "Command prompt Safe Mode" or in "Windows Safe Mode"? Forgot to do this step. If I restore an earlier version of the registry it works for a while and then Windows locks up. Eventually a similar BSOD error comes back. Starting to think it has Malware and may be phoning home over the internet.
 
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SBMongoos said:
Can you do this in "Command prompt Safe Mode" or in "Windows Safe Mode"? Forgot to do this step. If I restore an earlier version of the registry it works for a while and then Windows locks up. Eventually a similar BSOD error comes back. Starting to think it has Malware and may be phoning home over the internet.
Click to expand...

Yes. You can also run it while in Windows Recovery Environment.
 
Lord Nassirbannipal said:
Yes. You can also run it while in Windows Recovery Environment.
Click to expand...

Ugh.. got an error and could not run SFC. Only way to get around is force it to shutdown. I can get back in and restore a registry via ERUNT. Then I can get back into Safe Mode. When in Windows Safe Mode everything seems to run and behave fine. I've got Malwarebytes installed in Safe Mode and running it. Latest refs I can get is what is already installed dated from 1/31 I think it is. Found 60 issues in quick scan so doing a full scan. Then wanted to use another utility like MWB. I was then going to use a boot CD and try the SFC option again. Not sure if malware may be the issue yet or some Windows file got corrupt.
 
If it has 2 memory sticks. Try each one on its own to see if the memory is going bad or not.
 
SBMongoos said:
Ugh.. got an error and could not run SFC. Only way to get around is force it to shutdown. I can get back in and restore a registry via ERUNT. Then I can get back into Safe Mode. When in Windows Safe Mode everything seems to run and behave fine. I've got Malwarebytes installed in Safe Mode and running it. Latest refs I can get is what is already installed dated from 1/31 I think it is. Found 60 issues in quick scan so doing a full scan. Then wanted to use another utility like MWB. I was then going to use a boot CD and try the SFC option again. Not sure if malware may be the issue yet or some Windows file got corrupt.
Click to expand...


What error did you get that won't let you run SFC?
 
Here are four images of errors I'm getting after the PC is only for only a few minutes. These don't always happen if the PC locks up beforehand. There are about three or four more of similar errors after this. I was running Malwarebytes for about 45 min or longer in Safe Mode with no issues at all. So wondering if this is a hard disk issue or still some related driver issue in Windows.

If I try to run SFC at Safe Mode Command prompt I get the following error: "Windows File Protection could not initiate a scan of protected system files. The specific error code is 0x000006ba [The RPC server is unavailable.]."

one.jpg



two.jpg



three.jpg



four.jpg
 
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Have you tried running Memtest and hard drive diagnostic utility.? With all of that data loss it seems like either RAM or a hard drive problem. That would also explain why you can't run SFC.
 
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Lord Nassirbannipal said:
Have you tried running Memtest?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I'm concerned about the hard drive so I'm doing a system backup from a bootable CD. Near the end of the backup process I had 4 read errors from the disk. Not sure if these areas/sectors can be marked bad and move on or maybe I can use the backup now to restore onto another drive.

Looking like an HDD issue at this point.

Hey... appreciate your input and sticking with me on this.
 
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Ugh.... I could only skip over the read errors to get the backup to continue but when done and I try to validate the backup it says it's corrupt. Looking like a new HDD and a rebuild.
 
Okay... ran Memtest and did 7 passes with no errors. A recent version of Memtest.
 
SBMongoos said:
Ugh.... I could only skip over the read errors to get the backup to continue but when done and I try to validate the backup it says it's corrupt. Looking like a new HDD and a rebuild.
Click to expand...

$100 spot on it being corrupt.
 
402blownstroker said:
$100 spot on it being corrupt.
Click to expand...

Interesting... I took the drive out and connected it to a USB kit. Backed up this time 100% and even was able to validate it. Should be able to restore it to a new drive.

Ya...the other backup was run off of the boot CD on the machine itself and it was corrupt.
 
SBMongoos said:
Interesting... I took the drive out and connected it to a USB kit. Backed up this time 100% and even was able to validate it. Should be able to restore it to a new drive.

Ya...the other backup was run off of the boot CD on the machine itself and it was corrupt.
Click to expand...

Have you tried it with a different SATA cable and/or on a different SATA port?
 
Lord Nassirbannipal said:
Have you tried it with a different SATA cable and/or on a different SATA port?
Click to expand...

No. I had my neighbor pick up a new drive. Managed to find a decent local price. I think that's a good idea though. Don't have the drive in hand yet so I will try:

  1. same cable different port, then
  2. different cable

this morning to see what happens.
 
As I suspected changing the cable or trying another SATA port did not help. Based on what I had tried previous the problems always seem to occur at the same points on the original HDD. STILL, it was worth a try and thanks for mentioning it. I am doing a restore to the new drive now. Will be able to test it shortly.

Edit: new disk working great after backup restore to new disk.
 
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Ya know...I wonder if I can install the old disk as a secondary and if the bad sectors will be marked so I could use it for the swap file and for small backups.
 
I would'nt put anything of value on the drive .. run some scans on it and see what kind of errors pop up ..

if no errors .. then maybe the drive wasn't the real problem.. I had similar issues as what you have described and went with a new HDD .. was ok at first but continued to have "odd" problems a bit afterwards ..

turns out to be a bad PSU .. flaking out it caused some bad read/writes to the hdd I guess ..
 
ThreeDee said:
I would'nt put anything of value on the drive .. run some scans on it and see what kind of errors pop up ..

if no errors .. then maybe the drive wasn't the real problem.. I had similar issues as what you have described and went with a new HDD .. was ok at first but continued to have "odd" problems a bit afterwards ..

turns out to be a bad PSU .. flaking out it caused some bad read/writes to the hdd I guess ..
Click to expand...

Ya.. PSU's can be tricky to troubleshoot. I ran HDD Regenerator on the drive and found 3 bad sectors toward the end. Marked them and am now using the drive for the swap file and incremental data backups. I realize the risk but at least it works like redundancy when you think about it.
 
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