Windows stopped working and will not boot

[traveler]

This is a mystery to me. No more Windows.

Yesterday my power supply died. It died with a "pop" while I was playing HalfLife2. Instant off. So I went and replaced my dead 400W with a new 500W. Plugged it in. My P4P800d booted right up and I thought I was good to go as the Windows 2000 Professional screen showed and the loading thermometer bar showed it was loading. But then the bar stopped about 3/4 of the way across and no more.

Now the mystery.

No matter how many times I tried; no matter how many OS partition images I restored (and I tried several dating all the way back to September 2007); the same thing would happen. Windows would freeze at the same place while loading. (I know the images are good because they were working when I used them for driver testing back in November 2007) I can boot into safe mode fine with any image. And while in safe mode with networking active, I can access any and all hard drives and partitions and files from another computer on my network. MemTest runs fine from a floppy as does Partition Magic and any other floppy program I put in.

I also tried a duplicate hard drive that I had cloned my current 'c' drive from back in January 2008. Different hard drive, same result.

Next I tried to reinstall win2000 from its CD. I watched the screen as the install CD loaded the initial drivers. Then the screen said "Staring Windows 2000" and it froze there. I can't even get a fresh install going!

Any ideas? Any other tests or things to try? I'd like to get my system running again.

[RaiNMaN00001]

Sounds like a pain in the a$$
Couldn't this be some kind of hardware failure?
Maybe resetting your BIOS to factory standard could help?
It seems to me that you tried anything to bypass any software related issues and still it doesn't work, maybe by playing with the "lower levels" you can come up with something.

[Rick_EE]

I have seen it happen with video hardware problems. Since you can get in safe mode, you should be able to see boot logs. You can then see what the last thing to load was.

I have often seen that file to be something with agp in the name. That would indicate the video.

[rjs735]

From your description it maybe that another piece of hardware was damaged.
The poping is obviously due to the PS but may have been caused by a component over load.

I would approach as if it were a new system build. Start with just video 1 stick ram and HD. unplug every thing else.

Also run memory test and cpu tests.
mem86 or 86+ . To eliminate a ram problem as well as /or cpu problem.

It also wouldn't be bad to run some MB tests because it could be some function turned on in the bios but the Hardware is not there anymore.
Like dma function. Could be some ide chained read function or ide read failure.

[traveler]

Thanks Buds for the replys.

I cleared the CMOS and reset the BIOS. Then tried again. Still no booting into Windows.

So I rebooted into safe mode and looked at the ntbtlog.txt. Here's the end of that file. Is there a clue in it? The part that catches my eyes are all the "Did not load" lines especially the "Did not load driver ALL-IN-WONDER X800 Series" line. That's my card! It needs its drivers I would imagine. The last driver loaded was Cdfs.sys per this log file. Are there any other log files I should look at?

Any help anyone can provide is well appreciated.



Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Cdaudio.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Fs_Rec.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Null.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Beep.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\AvgArCln.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\AvgAsCln.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\avgclean.sys
Loaded driver \??\E:\Program Files\Norton SystemWorks 2003\Norton Ghost\ghpciscan.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\MTictwl.sys
Did not load driver i8042prt.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\sglfb.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\tga.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vga.sys
Did not load driver mnmdd.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Msfs.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Npfs.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\rasacd.sys
Did not load driver Wanarp.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\msgpc.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\netbt.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\netbios.sys
Did not load driver Parport.SYS
Did not load driver Serial.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\PCIDump.SYS
Did not load driver speedfan.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\rdbss.sys
Did not load driver PQNTDrv.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\mrxsmb.sys
Did not load driver magicpvt.SYS
Did not load driver giveio.SYS
Did not load driver Avg7Core.SYS
Did not load driver Avg7RsW.SYS
Did not load driver Avg7RsNT.SYS
Did not load driver AVG Anti-Spyware Driver.SYS
Did not load driver ALL-IN-WONDER X800 Series
Did not load driver ALL-IN-WONDER X800 Series Secondary
Did not load driver APC Battery BackUP
Did not load driver VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Did not load driver Creative Audigy Audio Processor (WDM)
Did not load driver Creative Game Port
Did not load driver OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Did not load driver Communications Port
Did not load driver Communications Port
Did not load driver ECP Printer Port
Did not load driver Audio Codecs
Did not load driver Legacy Audio Drivers
Did not load driver Media Control Devices
Did not load driver Legacy Video Capture Devices
Did not load driver Video Codecs
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Fastfat.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\nbf.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\afd.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\rdbss.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\mrxsmb.sys
Did not load driver Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\srv.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Cdfs.SYS

[Rickwell]

Boot in safe mode.Uninstall video driver and reboot.Then reinstall video driver.Or reseat video card and hope for the best.I've heard of some weird things like removing the video card and let it lay out for a day.Then put it back in and then it works.It had something to do with the caps charging up.But removing the card let the caps discharge over time.

Did you use any cuss words ?

[traveler]

Thanks Rickwell.

How about this one Buds:

I deleted my 'c' partition. Then I booted from the Windows 2000 installation CD. It booted right up and detected no operating system and no active partition and goes right into the clean install routine. A blue screen appears which says "Windows 2000 Setup" in the top left and a grey bar appears along the bottom. After the screen says loading drivers in the grey bar for a few minutes and flashes the names of those drivers, it then says "Setup is starting Windows 2000" in the grey bar at bottom of the screen. And that's all that happens. It stays that way. And I would think there should be no drivers issues at this point.

Also the RAM passed a couple hours of Memtest with no errors.

What's left?

[zapionics<alt>]

It sounds like some device(s) on the motherboard are fried.
Can u see anything visually?

[Rick_EE]

Restore your image and try booting without the CD/DVD connected, then to it removing various pieces of hardware. what rjs735 said.

CDFS.sys is cd file system. I could be the IDE controller.

[rjs735]

It appaers as if loading 2k virtual drivers vs real mode drivers. You use real mode until you try to bring up the os then it start to load the virtual drivers. This usually indicates a software problem but it may be that the hardware that the virtual driver is trying to use is not functioning.

There should be way of loading the os without the virtual drivers. I am not that savy with 2k. I don't like the fact that so may drivers didn't load.

It would be nice to compare a good system log with your failed system log.

I would rather look at why the first driver that failed to load and why.

[maxidius]

My P4C800 suddenly rebooted or hung several times in a day since 2 weeks ago. At first, I suspected either virus or malware stealthily installed in my PC.

Yet, after I re-installed freshly in the same hard disk, or another hard disk, the same trouble repeated even at higher frequency. I started to think about PSU, but it is 500W, and I have only one HDD working with 2 DVD drives at any time. The video card is a low-end nVidia 6200, 256 MB, passive cooling.

However, just yesterday, I found out that at the moment my PC rebooted or hung up, the passive aluminum cooling part on top of the chip just under CPU is too hot. I open the case, and do not have any fan blowing air out of the case.

I still think the board may be defected; however, I don't want to build a new system yet. What seems mysterious to me is that, it only happens recently, after I installed WinXP SP3. I am not sure if that might relate to the trouble or not.

I did all kind of checks, memory, etc., but can't find out what causes this.

[traveler]

Thanks for the replies Buds.

Originally Posted by rjs735

[snip]

I don't like the fact that so may drivers didn't load.

It would be nice to compare a good system log with your failed system log.

I would rather look at why the first driver that failed to load and why.

Where would I find the good system log? I have plenty of good ghost images from earlier?

I'm going to remove the IDE drives and see if I can do a clean install onto a SATA drive. That should test the IDE controller.

[XJ.]

Looking at the drivers that didn't install and the problems you had trying to do a clean install, it does look like the board was fried (multiple components like audio, serial I/O, USB ports, etc aren't able to load). I can't be 100% positive, but I think it's real bad news bud

[ctal]

What most of those devices have in common, aside from the AIW-related things, is the Southbridge chip. I'd first physically touch the Southbridge and see if it seems abnormally hot. Then I'd try disabling in the bios as many of the devices as you can for which drivers were listed as not loading in the ntbtlog listing. Then see if you can boot the os, and if you can, re-enable the devices in the bios one-by-one.

I don't think that getting past the "loading drivers" step in the W2K clean install is conclusive of anything -- the installation s/w might have set up drivers without realizing at that point that the corresponding hardware had a problem.

HTH,

-- Al

[INVALiD]

This is a very weird phenomenon. I hope you get to figuring it out.
Kind regards
C