WinXP freezes with a black screen when booting. (After POST)

My Windows XP Pro box will not boot. After POST, the screen goes black (with flashing curser) and nothing else happens. Ctrl-alt-del doesn’t even work. I have to power cycle.

My problem appears to be similar to this MS support item: http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;314503 Except I cannot boot to Windows as they instruct.

I’m running WinXP Pro (with all updates and service packs). Zonealarm, NAV (nightly liveupdate and check), regularly run adaware/spybot, and have Spywareblaster/Teatimer.

System has been stable and fast in the last 3~4 months since I did an install on a new HD (Maxtor 200GB, single partition). Two days ago, I installed Azureus Bittorrent and haven’t seen any problems.

Today however, I have a problem. After a system cold reboot, I can no longer load windows. My system POSTs, then the screen goes black (with a flashing underline curser in the top left of the screen). I am likewise unable to boot using my Windows Install CD. In that case, it says “checking system hardware”, then the screen goes black and the machine freezes. (I suspect that Azureus has messed up my filesystem)

Boot floppy also doesn’t work.

So I tried disabling my HD in the BIOS (set IDE 0 to “none”, left IDE 1 as cd-rom. No other devices). Once I did that, I could boot via the CD and enter the recovery console!

chkdsk /p reports “found one or more errors on the volume”

First of all, I’m going to try and boot to Knoppix and backup my essential files across my home network. After that, what’s the best order to try and fix?

Should I chkdsk /r ? Or is it better to try fixboot or fixmbr first? Or maybe backup the ntldr, ntdetect, and boot.ini files then copy the ones off the boot floppy?


This is the second time this has happened to me, last time also occurred a little while after installing Azureus. All attempts to fix failed and I gave up since I’d been looking at buying a larger drive anyway.

But I didn’t realize just how hard it was going to be to get al lmy apps set up correctly (some, like my work VPN software, need a lot of loving before they’ll work). So I’d really like to keep this install if possible.


Advice greatly appreciated.

 

Well, it seems I either didn't make my subject line provocative enough, or nobody else has ever had this problem. :-(

I think I will keep a running commentary of my efforts here though, in case it might help someone else later.

So, the first thing I did was boot the system using Knoppix.

Under the Penguin icon, there's a place to install new software. I ran that and chose "f-Prot virus scanner". After it installed, I ran the scanner, allowed it to update it's virus files, then scanned y system. It was done the following morning with no viruses found (whew).

Under the the Penguin icon (again) there a place you can start the ssh service. Once that was done, I could login to my computer from my wife's box using WinSCP and copy off all the really essential files (like email folders, pictures, etc).

According to the MS article in my first post, my problem is that I have a broken Master Boot Record, Partition table, Boot sector, or NT Loader. I'm unsure if the fact I can boot Knoppix and view the whole drive means I can cross any of those out as "not the problem".

I also found NTFS.com which has some walkthroughs for doing repair work. I'll post later how that works out.

First though, I think I should boot back into the recover console and run chkdsk again. I'm not sure if running chkdsk /r on the drive with help or hurt at this point/ My guess is that I should get it to fix what it can before doing the other tasks that the articles suggest.

(wish me luck)

 

First run chkdsk /r as that will repair as issues with the file system and disk drive. Then we can work from there it could be the MBR and bootsector, but run chkdsk first.

 

What MBO. are you using? I had a similar problem with mine,it was a the usb. USB was the problem with the old NForce 2's and some of the knew NForce 4's. I unplugged all my usb's and booted normally and then plugged them back in one by one. When I plugged my printer in the problem reoccurred.

 

Good idea bchivers, but I tried that already and it didn't help.

 

Ok, chkdsk /r finished.
Reboot and set the BIOS to see the HD again. ... And the problem persists.
Reboot, and disable HD in the BIOS again.
Then boot into Recovery console and fixmbr. It didn't complain, so I guess it's ok.
Reboot, enable the HD, and... the problem persists. grrrrr

 

Follow the steps on this post

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showpost.php?p=581743&postcount=3

 

Well, out of frustration, I went back into the Recovery console and ran fixboot.
It asked me if I was sure and gave a sucess message afterwards. Whee... a positive message/

Now when I boot I get the message "A disk read error occurred. Pres ctrl-alt-del to restart"

 

fixboot is for FAT32 partitions. Go back into the recovery console and run fixmbr again.

[EDIT} Then follow the directions from the link in Post #7 [/EDIT]

 

Yeah, I went and re-read what the difference was between fixmbr and fixboot. Then when and ran fixmbr again.

Then I saw your message, went into the console, and followed the instructions in your link. I copied ntldr, ntdetect.com over from my original WinXP install CD and verified that boot.ini "looked ok". (boot.ini has an extra flag /noexecute=optin but it seems like that's ok).

Now when I boot, I get the black screen for about 2 minutes, then the message "a Disk read error has occured".

 

Your partition tables are corrupt, attempt a repair install. If that fails then you will need to do a clean install.

 

How can Knoppix Linux mount my drive if the partitions are messed up. Are you sure that's the problem?

Is there anything else I can try before I wipe the drive and re-install? ("repair" install isn't an option on my version of winxp. The only thing close is "Automatic Recovery" which I can't do because I don't have the floppy it wants when I try that option).

 

Looks like you're right. A friend loaned me Partition Magic 5 and when it runs, it informs me that the NTFS volume has a Critical Error 1527 "Bad update sequence number".

According to the Partition Magic help file, this is a "catastrophic problem" and cannot be fixed by the tool.

I guess I'm going to have to wipe the drive and reinstall. Sucks. (I still want to know why Knoppix can load/read/copy the files though. Why doesn't it choke as well?). If I didn't want to use Photoshop (Yes, I have a legit copy!) and my windows-only work VPN software, I think I'd install Debian (or something) right now.

 

I can't explain it, sometimes Knoppix can read a partition and Windows can't; fixmbr will fix a corrupt MBR but can't fix a corrupt partion table.

 

In case it wasn't obvious, I was expressing a general desire to know why Knoppix was working... not demanding that you come up with an answer.

 

WOO HOO! Looks like I fixed it!
(Would an admin please add "[fixed]" to the title of this thread?)

Since Shadow_Puter_Dude identified the partition table as the problem I tried resizing the partition table using the Linux tool ntfsresize. And it seems to have worked.

If anyone else has this problem and wants to try this approach (instead of just wiping the drive and re-installing Windows) here's a quick rundown of what I did (going from memory so it won't be exact):

I did this on a system with a single drive, single partition, and less than 50% of the drive currently filled up with files. *WARNING* Although doing this will probably not distroy your drive, it could easily wipe away all your files. Make sure you've already done a backup using SSH (one way to do that is described in post #2 of this thread

1. Download and burn Knoppix (I used version 3.9 since I couldn't figure out where to get version 4.0)
2. Boot Knoppix
3. Do NOT open your harddrive (since Knoppix would mount the drive so you can view it. We don't want any drives mounted for this task)
4. Run QTParted (I think it was under start->system->QTParted).
5. Click "HDA1" and wait for it to scan the drive
6. Ensure that the drive info window (bottom left of the main QTParted window) says the drive is "idle" (or something). If it says "busy" then you have the drive mounted and this isn't going to work. (Close QTParted, open a terminal window and type "umount /dev/hda1" then Run QTParted again)
7. In the Tools (Operations?) menu, choose "resize" and a new window will open.
8. Adjust the right hand edge of the slider bar until the drive is cut in half (Some other amount might work too).
9. Click OK
10. You now should be back on the original QTParted screen. You should now show two hard drives where there used to be just one (so maybe you now have HDA1 and HDA2 insetad of just HDA1)
11. Click the new drive (partition) and set it to be of type "ntfs" (Either you right click, or it's in one of the menus)
12. In the File (?) menu, choose "commit", Click "OK" when it asks it you're sure.
13. When it finished, it gave me a "sucess" message so I exited the program. If yours gives you a "fail" message then I'm not sure what you should do.
14. Shutdown Knoppix, remove the CD, and press enter.
15. Your system should now be able to boot into windows.

When I rebooted, Windows kind of freaked out and wanted to run chkdsk on each partition. Also, when it finally allowed me to login, it gave me 10 or so "new hardware found" bubbles and rebooted itself *twice*.

However, it sems to have settled down now and I'm typing this from that box. I will do a followup if the system fails again.

MUCH thanks to Shadow_Puter_Dude for his help.

Best wishes

Sukotto

 

That's good news, and the info is definitely useful. I am researching how to edit the partition table with a disk editor; so, the partition can be made bootable again.