P
Paul Yeoman
Hi all, I have a desperate problem with my XP Professional system not booting.
Background info: Win XP Pro SP2 (all latest updates) installed on a 300GB
SATA drive, file system is NTFS. When trying to boot it shows the 'bad
shutdown occurred' screen. If I try 'Start Normally' or 'Last Known Good'
then it gets to the standard Windows logo and after ~20 secs it flashes up a
BSOD (for well under a second so I can't read it) and restarts.
I've tried all the various options accessed via the F8 key plus all the safe
mode options. In safe mode it gets to loading mup.sys and then restarts (I
am informed that this doesn't mean that mup.sys is the problem).
I tried to do a repair install but that option wasn't there (only a complete
new install, which AFAIK would wipe the drive). I can access the recovery
console using the CD, but I can't do much with it. For example, the Dir
command is unable to enumerate the files, ChkDsk won't run, and FixBoot tries
but fails, saying that the boot sector is corrupt. The Map command lists the
disk, but shows its drive letter as '?'.
BTW, it takes well over half an hour to even access the recovery console, as
the system takes ages at the "examining disk" stage. Maybe this is because
it's an SATA disk? It does correctly report the disk size.
The BIOS definitely recognises the disk though. No hardware changes have
taken place and no hardwar errors are reported (via SMART monitoring, etc).
The only software change was some Windows auto-update which I installed (July
14th 07), though I can't say for sure that it's relevant to this.
Now I also have another, 60GB standard IDE disk in my machine which I use as
backup. This has XP Pro installed on NTFS. If I change the boot order in
the BIOS I can boot into this installation and it can see my main disk in 'My
Computer'. However it won't allow me to access the disk - it says something
to do with 'I/O Error'. I have installed the driver (viasraid.sys) which
should allow me to access the SATA disk.
Anyway, despite having a backup drive, I haven't used it regularly thus
there is no backup of the last few months - data I *need* to get at. I would
imagine that the data is still intact, seeing as the disk can be accessed and
the OS does start to load.
To summarise: Main install of WinXP Pro on SATA disk won't boot, safemode
etc no help, recovery console no help, disk can be seen but not accessed via
other WinXP Pro on same machine. What can I do?
Thanks in advance for your help,
Paul
PS - I'm using the XP firewall plus a hardware firewall in my router, and
up-to-date AVG anti virus.
Background info: Win XP Pro SP2 (all latest updates) installed on a 300GB
SATA drive, file system is NTFS. When trying to boot it shows the 'bad
shutdown occurred' screen. If I try 'Start Normally' or 'Last Known Good'
then it gets to the standard Windows logo and after ~20 secs it flashes up a
BSOD (for well under a second so I can't read it) and restarts.
I've tried all the various options accessed via the F8 key plus all the safe
mode options. In safe mode it gets to loading mup.sys and then restarts (I
am informed that this doesn't mean that mup.sys is the problem).
I tried to do a repair install but that option wasn't there (only a complete
new install, which AFAIK would wipe the drive). I can access the recovery
console using the CD, but I can't do much with it. For example, the Dir
command is unable to enumerate the files, ChkDsk won't run, and FixBoot tries
but fails, saying that the boot sector is corrupt. The Map command lists the
disk, but shows its drive letter as '?'.
BTW, it takes well over half an hour to even access the recovery console, as
the system takes ages at the "examining disk" stage. Maybe this is because
it's an SATA disk? It does correctly report the disk size.
The BIOS definitely recognises the disk though. No hardware changes have
taken place and no hardwar errors are reported (via SMART monitoring, etc).
The only software change was some Windows auto-update which I installed (July
14th 07), though I can't say for sure that it's relevant to this.
Now I also have another, 60GB standard IDE disk in my machine which I use as
backup. This has XP Pro installed on NTFS. If I change the boot order in
the BIOS I can boot into this installation and it can see my main disk in 'My
Computer'. However it won't allow me to access the disk - it says something
to do with 'I/O Error'. I have installed the driver (viasraid.sys) which
should allow me to access the SATA disk.
Anyway, despite having a backup drive, I haven't used it regularly thus
there is no backup of the last few months - data I *need* to get at. I would
imagine that the data is still intact, seeing as the disk can be accessed and
the OS does start to load.
To summarise: Main install of WinXP Pro on SATA disk won't boot, safemode
etc no help, recovery console no help, disk can be seen but not accessed via
other WinXP Pro on same machine. What can I do?
Thanks in advance for your help,
Paul
PS - I'm using the XP firewall plus a hardware firewall in my router, and
up-to-date AVG anti virus.