Continuous reboot before XP login, safe mode unavaliable

[Zauerstollen]

I’m having an odd problem I haven’t seen before.

My computer was working fine all day yesterday.  I turned it on last night to do some work and noticed that the mouse arrow was not on the screen.  If I move the mouse around I can highlight different icons.  I chose to shutdown the regular way but could not get to the final “shutdown” prompt.  I finally did a hard shut down (which I have to do a few times in the past without a problem). 

The computer wound startup, give me the black screen saying that I shut it down improperly, and I tell it to startup normal anyway.  This time, the windows XP screen comes up I get a quick blue screen that I cannot read, and the computer reboots.  I cannot boot up in any safe mode and cannot startup using the Windows XP disk.  I cannot even get to the point of reinstalling windows.  I was able to turn off the command that restarted the computer upon system fail and saw what was on the blue screen.  It read:


A problem has been detected and windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer. 

If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer.  If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Disable or uninstall any anti-virus, disk defragmentation or backup utilities.  Check your hard drive configuration, and check for any updated drivers.  Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer. 

Technical information: 

*** STOP:  0x00000024 (0x00190203, 0x87388EF0, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000)


I cannot seem to get into any screen to uninstall anything.  The one thing I noticed is that upon turning on after a hard shut down, it does a memory check before checking the drives.  When it reboots after the blue screen, it does not conduct a memory test.  My wife put in the diagnostics CD for the hard drive and conducted a disk scan.  It ran to 99% and hung there all night.

Any ideas?

I built this computer about five years ago.  My operating system is XP.  I have 1gig of RAM.  My master is about also about five years old and my slave is three years old.

Thanks in advance.

[patio]

From MSFN:

A problem occurred within NTFS.SYS, the driver file that allows the system to read and write to NTFS file system drives. There may be a physical problem with the disk, or an Interrupt Request Packet (IRP) may be corrupted. Other common causes include heavy hard drive fragmentation, heavy file I/O, problems with some types of drive-mirroring software, or some antivirus software. I suggest running ChkDsk or ScanDisk as a first step; then disable all file system filters such as virus scanners, firewall software, or backup utilities. Check the file properties of NTFS.SYS to ensure it matches the current OS or SP version. Update all disk, tape backup, CD-ROM, or removable device drivers to the most current versions.

It sounds like the main HDD is having issues...it never completed the disk check ? ?
You can DLoad and run the diagnostics on it from the drive manuf. website...follow the guide to creating a bootable CD.
If the drive is failing it does not have to be running Windows to retrieve your data...it can be hooked up as a slave on another machine to do this.
Slave Drive Tutorial.

Best of Luck and let us know...

[Zauerstollen]

One other thing we noticed while checking around last night, some archived posts suggested that the RAM is having an issue.  I turned he CPU off, removed out 1gig dim, blew the dust off the entire area and dim with our canned air, and reinstalled in the other slot.  Same problem.

[patio]

Along with the above suggestion you can also DLoad and run MemTest...also FREE to test the RAM...
But i would think that data recovery and backup should be the priority for now...
With weak or failing hard drives the more you do with them the further away data recovery gets...you may only get one chance at it.

[Zauerstollen]

That's what we are going to do.  We don't have another computer we can hook the drive up to, so it looks like GeekSquad will get a shot at it.

I really appreciate your help this morning, Patio.  Have a great week!

Ray

[patio]

Please don't turn it over to Geek Squad...
Using that Tutorial you should be able to do it yourself or with someone's assistance...
There has to be someone family/friends that have a machine for this...takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.....
Geek Squad has wiped more data than google has right now.

At least ask around and try to find an alternative.

[Zauerstollen]

New questions attached to this post:

Geek Squad could find nothing so I took it back.  I have a new hard drive alone in the tower, loaded WinXP on it and it runs fine.  When I add the existing slave (the new drive set up as the new master), again it runs fine.  When I set up the old master (the drive from where all the problems were originating) as the slave the the new drive/master, WinXP loads then I get a blank screen indefinitely.  Upon startup the new "slave" can be seen as in CMOS as well.  I was about to get an external drive kit and plug it in as a USP external drive to see if I can get see the data.

My question is this:  I was under the impression that despite having an operating system on a drive, when that drive is set up as a slave, the operating system on it will just sit there and do nothing.  Am I wrong in this assumption?

As always, thanks,

Ray

[Zauerstollen]

When I read my post back to my wife I realized just how confusing it sounds.  That's what happens when you type angry and don't proof read.  Sorry about that!

My question is:  Can an operating system loaded onto a slave drive affect the initial boot up?

Ray

[patio]

It shouldn't...
Are you sure the jumpers are set properly ? ?
Cabled correctly ? ?

MB============================Slave======Master.

It also may have been booting to the 2nd drive all this time. Double check the boot drive priority in the BIOS...make the neccessary changes and press F10 to save changes and Exit.

[Zauerstollen]

Jumpers for each drive set up properly, cabled correctly, and the boot drive priority is set up correctly.

If a slave drive were malfunctioning, would that cause the system to not boot at all if the master were functioning properly?

I tried booting into safe mode and it displays commands line for line, then freezes at the file “mup.sys.”  This is the same file every time we try to reboot.  Interestingly enough, this is the exact same thing that would happen when we originally tried to boot up in safe mode before configuring the new drive as the master. 

I was thinking of purchasing an external drive kit so I can try to see the data via USB.  Any ideas?

Ray

[Zauerstollen]

I'm back with an update,  and more perplexed than ever!  I did buy that external drive kit, and I hooked up the problem disk drive via USB (while running Windows XP with the newly configured master drive).  Couldn't see any of the data on the drive.  Hooked the same drive up via USB to my laptop.  Couldn't see the data on it.  So I hooked it up to a 3rd computer (at work), and I was able to access the drive and see all of the data with no problem!  I immediately burned all of the data to DVD, so fortunately I have recovered anything that may not have been recently backed up.

I also ran a disk check using the Seagate "Seatools" utility that came with the disk.  It failed during the test of the file structure, and only provided an empty error log.

So I decided to try resurrecting this drive since the data had been recovered.  I formatted it and loaded Windows XP.  It booted up and started Windows just fine...until I loaded SP2.  Now it gets stuck on the Win XP splash screen during startup just like before!  Could SP2 really have been causing this problem from the beginning?  This wouldn't really make sense to me, as I have been running SP2 for a couple of years now with no problems.  Or is there some other problem with the disk that requires another kind of repair or formatting? 

[toda]

I had a similar problem when Stopzilla updated. I found that there was a driver problem and SZ technical support sent a Ren which I did and it worked fine. Perhaps you had a software update and a file was corrupted. Had I known this, it could have saved me and my hard drive hours of problems....just a thought. 

[patio]

I had a similar problem when Stopzilla updated. I found that there was a driver problem and SZ technical support sent a Ren which I did and it worked fine. Perhaps you had a software update and a file was corrupted. Had I known this, it could have saved me and my hard drive hours of problems....just a thought.

He hasn't been back since March...