Windows XP x64 computer won't boot. Help!

C

Cycloptersaurus

n00b
Joined
Jun 27, 2006
Messages
49
Last night, I noticed images on my computer were displaying strange – color and alignment were off, etc. Then, Firefox started crashing, very frequently. Eventually, my computer just up and crashed. I tried rebooting, and it would get pretty far, windows logo screen, or the user select screen, and then crash again. It would occasionally crash during the boot. When I did occasionally successfully boot, all my icons on the desktop looked as usual.

Then I started getting this message when booting up:

“Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
C:\windows\system32\config\system

You can attempt to repair this file by starting windows setup using the original setup CD-Rom. Select "r" at the first screen to start repair.”

I couldn’t find my original XP x64 cd, so I tried regular XP instead. Crashed as it was loading the drivers and what not, no notification, the computer was just suddenly off, just like the crashes earlier.

I finally find my XP x64 cd, and when I try booting from it, I get this message:

"the file dmboot.sys is corrupted."

So I go back from booting from HD, and I start getting this message:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

<Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.

Please re-install a copy of the above file"

I’ve been able to occasionally boot into safe mode with command prompt, and I ran chkdsk from there, to no avail. Since I can’t get into the Recovery console, I don’t know what to do. I REALLY don’t want to lose stuff on my HD, would reinstalling XP64 lose everything? I have Vista lying around too, so I could install that if I didn’t lose anything from my HD. I’ve got lots of files that I absolutely need. What could be the problem? How can I fix this?
 
You should be able to run a repair install by booting off the XP CD. Sounds like you HD is going bad, I've seen this type of behavior in those cases. How old is it?
 
It may be worth noting that when I go into the safe mode command prompt, I can stay there indefinitely. Dunno if that's important, but I'm really hanging on to any possibility that it's not the HD.

If, God forbid, it is the HD, is there any way to get some stuff off of there in the condition it's in now?
 
download a linux iso, and boot from the cd. if it boots this will cross out any hardware issues, leaving the hard drive left. if it does not boot into linux and keeps crashing, the issue is another peice of hardware.
 
I don't have access to a CD burner - the cd burner is on the screwed up computer. I might be able to get a friend to do it, but I'm still a little unclear as to how that would help.

Anyway, when I said I ran chkdisk from safe mode, I mean to say it did work, and it said it repaired some stuff, but I still have the problem.

Anyway, I tried running the windows CD again with everything unplugged, and it said"

"File \AMD64\ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The error code is 4

Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit."
 
I'm not sure what you mean. I booted into safe mode with command prompt and typed "chkdsk", and it went through and searched anr repaired stuff. I didn't get to it through the recovery console.
 
I've been told that setting up this drive as a slave to another on a different computer would allow me to back everything up with minimal risk. Is this true?
 
Depends on how you define "Minimal Risk." If the hard drive is going bad, then every time you attempt to read or write to it could be in fact causing more damage. You said you ran chkdsk and it fixed/repaired some things. It most likely found some bad sectors on the hard drive platter and has marked them as bad.

Yes, attaching the drive as a slave drive would give you access to the files if the drive is still able to read them, but I would suggest using the drive as little as possible until you're actually ready to try and rescue your data off of it.
 
Ok, I'm looking at the other computer, which uses ATA, but mine has SATA. I don't suppose there's an adapter or anything?

Thanks for all the help.
 
Huh... that just might work. I assume it works okay, but it looks like there were some negative reviews for it on there, and it seems like a shame to spend 12 bucks on something I'll use once, and might not even work, when I could get a low capacity hard drive for fairly cheap...

Anybody have any suggestions?
 
I just discovered that my computer does have a way to attach an ATA drive - using the DVD player's cable. So now I guess the next step is to put a different HD in there to test it out. Can I just take one from another computer, without having to set anything up, clear the drive, reinstall windows etc? Or do I have to start from scratch?

Thanks
 
I think this is a pretty important development.

I tried booting up my computer from the XP x64 CD WITHOUT MY HARD DRIVE IN THE COMPUTER. It failed - same error I got before:

"File \AMD64\ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded. The error code is 4

Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit."

I figure maybe it's a defective DVD drive, so I try hooking up it up to a different computer, with the same XP cd, and it worked. Got to the recovery console and everything.

Does this rule out the HD? What else could it be, memory? mobo? processor? how can I narrow it down?

Thanks again
 
Cycloptersaurus said:
take one from another computer, without having to set anything up, clear the drive, reinstall windows etc? Or do I have to start from scratch?
Click to expand...

I don't think I follow... I'd consider reinstalling Windows "starting from scratch" anyways.
 
I was talking regarding the idea of transferring the files from my "defective" hard drive to a new drive, but since my current drive won't boot, I'm gonna have to use another drive. Could I just take a drive out of another computer and use that, or do I have to have a drive that is specially formatted for my system?

This may be a moot point now though, since it's sounding to me like the drive isn't the problem, and if it's not, I can always burn data to CDs when I get my system up and running again.
 
The problem is XP detects and installs your hardware when it gets installed.
So installing to a hard drive on your desktop, then sticking it on your laptop, won't be the best way... Once you stick it in the laptop... big problems.

I've personally never done that, and I wouldn't think it would work.

I've never used it, but there is a free disk clone program out there (Sourceforge has it I think). Forgot the name of it, but Clonezilla might be it.
 
Where does it say he has a laptop?

If it's a desktop just remove the old drive, slap in a new SATA or IDE HD and reinstall XP64 clean. Then once you get the new desktop running, install the old hd back and copy all data you can still save from there. If the installation will fail even on the new HD and it's not related to the cd/dvd used, then you got another hardware problem to address.

But in any case you will have use for that extra hd space so it's a good way to begin.
 
you can do it, but you have to boot from the Windows XP disk and run a repair of the OS so that it will install the necessary drivers for the new hardware.
 
lol- either way you need some sort of media then.

Your best bet may be to buy an external CD drive... Make sure it is bootable.
 
I don't think my DVD-R is the problem. As I said, it works hooked up to a different PC, and I tried swapping the ribon cables in my PC in case that was the problem, but it didn't fix anything.
 
I unplugged one of my sticks of memory, and it booted to the windows setup. As far as I can tell, this is pretty solid proof that the memory is the problem - however, if the HD is still a suspect, I am reluctant to put it back in the drive for fear of additional damage. Should I still play it safe, buy a new HD, and reinstall windows on it (that's a pretty big hassle...), do I need to do some additional testing, or is this pretty solid proof?
 
So close... and yet so far. I plugged in my HD and booted with the one memory stick removed, and it booted to the desktop - just the background though, no icons, nor could I right click. It was my custom background though. I rebooted, and the second time it booted fine, all my old icons, all was well. I burned some of my important data on a CD. I'm about to call about returning the defective memory stick, when it occurs to me to try the stick in a different socket. Plugged in, boot the XP cd to be safe, and it works. So I plug the HD in, and right after the windows loading screen and before the sign in thing, the screen flashes blue with some text (so brief it was unreadable) and vanishes. So I try unplugging the "defective" ram and boot back up, but I get the same blue screen problem again. So I'm back to square one - perhaps a motherboard issue? processor? If it's one of those, I don't have any idea how to test it.
 
There are some free programs you can use to test your basic hardware.

Memtest86 = Memory testing program. It will find bad spots in your RAM and can be booted from a cd without requiring an operating system be installed. This is something I would recommend everyone have and it will definitively identify whether your RAM is fully functional or not.

Prime95 = CPU burn-in program. This will attempt to utilize as much of your CPU as possible and watch for errors that might occur if part of the CPU is bad or is overheating. This is a good test of whether or not your system is fully stable but it requires an operating system in order to run.

SpeedFan = For testing your hard drive, you can usually go to the manufacturer's website and download a utility to test the functionality of your hard drive, but if you just want a quick look at the SMART status of your drive, SpeedFan will display that and help you understand what each value means. The downside is that it's not always compatible with your motherboard.

Hope these help.
 
Ok, I tried memtest with the ram that I had before, and was supposedly working, and it all checked out - apparently it works. I used some compressed air to blow some of the dust out of my computer as well, just in case. I still do have the problem, but I did notice something that may be of importance. When it's loading up windows, the light on my computer indicating that it's loading stays lit for a while, but then there is a clicking noise, and it is no longer lit. It sits on the windows screen for a while, then it goes black, the light goes on again, and I get the blue flash before it reboots again. I don't know if this info might be helpful, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case it might provide some insight into the situation.
 
Cycloptersaurus said:
Ok, I tried memtest with the ram that I had before, and was supposedly working, and it all checked out - apparently it works. I used some compressed air to blow some of the dust out of my computer as well, just in case. I still do have the problem, but I did notice something that may be of importance. When it's loading up windows, the light on my computer indicating that it's loading stays lit for a while, but then there is a clicking noise, and it is no longer lit. It sits on the windows screen for a while, then it goes black, the light goes on again, and I get the blue flash before it reboots again. I don't know if this info might be helpful, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case it might provide some insight into the situation.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming you are talking about the light that indicates hard disk access that's on the front of the system, usually red?

If so, I'm 99% sure your hard drive is probably going bad. I wouldn't rule out other possible hardware failures either, but when your hard drive starts making clicking noises like that, it's almost always a sign that the drive is about to die. The blue screen error that flashes and disappears (because it's setup to automatically reboot on a BSOD instead of leaving the BSOD on the screen) is probably mentioning something along the lines of not being able to read the disk or a disk I/O problem.

Do not use that hard drive again until you have another one to backup all the data onto. I would buy a new SATA hard drive, remove your old one, install Windows onto the new hard drive, put the old one back in as a "slave" and copy all your data from the old hard drive to the new one. If you're lucky, you'll be able to copy everything off of the old drive before it completely dies.

I've had this happen to me about three times. I've been lucky and there was only one instance where I was not able to copy everything off the dying drive before it completely died. Luckily, the stuff I didn't get copied wasn't all that important anyway. In that case, the drive didn't completely die; but it would not read the data from certain sectors of the drive so I was not able to access that specific data. In the other cases, the drive actually died right after I finished copying my data over. Literally, after copying everything I did a reboot and the drive would no longer read or write anything at all. Talk about getting really lucky.

It's very important that you do not use your dying drive for anything until you are ready to copy your data from it. Do not leave it in a system plugged in in any way; no data or power cables connected. Only reconnect the drive after you have a new one in the system with the OS installed on the new drive at which point you can copy the data over.

The next step wold be to RMA the dying drive if it's still under warranty.

For the record, using SMART to assess the "health" of the drive is mostly useless. By the time SMART detects anything is wrong, in most cases it's too late. From what I remember, what little it checks is from reads only and doesn't check anything concerning writes to the drive. If someone knows of a link stating otherwise, I would appreciate it if you would post it.

 
SmokeRngs said:
It's very important that you do not use your dying drive for anything until you are ready to copy your data from it. Do not leave it in a system plugged in in any way; no data or power cables connected. Only reconnect the drive after you have a new one in the system with the OS installed on the new drive at which point you can copy the data over.
Click to expand...

SmokeRngs is right. You don't want to continue using the drive if you suspect it's going bad. Definitely your first priority (if you have any valuable data on the drive) would be to get another drive to back it up. Clicking noises and slow loading times are good indications that your drive is not very healthy.
 
Ok, I'm gonna get a new SATA drive and do as you guys said. When I do get it, how do I hook the new SATA up as master and the old as slave? is there something in the bios I have to mess with? Or do I just install windows on the new HD, and then reboot with the old drive plugged in also? In that case, I suppose I could just tell it to boot manually from the new drive, right?
 
Actually you want to completely remove the old drive and install the new one, then add your OS. After that, you can plug the old drive into another sata port as a slave and recover your data.
 
After I get the OS installed, how do I "plug the old drive into another sata port as a slave"? How do I ensure the computer knows it's the slave drive, and not the master?
 
From the bios's I've played with, they will boot from the first sata drive in the series with a bootable partition. In other words if you have sata ports 0-3, and you have drives with WindowsXP in slots 1 and 3, it will boot from the drive in slot 1. Some bios's will even allow to specify which sata slot to boot from first in your bios settings.
 
You should be able to select which hard drive you want as the boot drive in the BIOS. After installing the OS on the new drive (without having the old drive plugged in) plug in the old drive. Then go into the BIOS and make sure the new drive is the one it's set to boot to. After that, let it boot and it should pick up the new drive to boot off of.

 
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