HELP: Windows doesn't boot!

[nextgenxbox]

I have two windows installs (yeah... I know, WHY!?). One is Media Center and one is XP Home. Theyre on their own partitions.

The XP media loads perfect. The XP HOME DOES NOT. It just stays stuck at the windows logo screen. I can load into it using safe mode though.

Any ideas guys?

[_sorrow_]

What, if any, changes have you made since the last successful boot? Drivers / devices in particular, or programs, updates, etc..

Also, if its not booting, what is it telling you? What kind of stuff have you tried so far? How about roll-backs? (I'm not a fan, but supposedly they can work...)

[nextgenxbox]

What, if any, changes have you made since the last successful boot? Drivers / devices in particular, or programs, updates, etc..

Also, if its not booting, what is it telling you? What kind of stuff have you tried so far? How about roll-backs? (I'm not a fan, but supposedly they can work...)

I really dont remember the last thing I did. It was like 2 months ago, I just havent gotten around to fixing it.

And whats telling me its not booting is that it stays at the Windows XP logo screen with that little bar animation just going back and forth and nothing happens.

[_sorrow_]

I really dont remember the last thing I did. It was like 2 months ago, I just havent gotten around to fixing it.

And whats telling me its not booting is that it stays at the Windows XP logo screen with that little bar animation just going back and forth and nothing happens.

mmmm, bummer. Well, first of all, i'm pretty sure that there are people on here that know a lot more than i do, but i'll try and give you a couple ideas before going to bed.

Try (in safe mode) to revert to an old registry version... the reason that safe mode is working, is it does not load the registry (among other things). Check this page out (http://www.computerhope.com/registry.htm#10); hopefully that will provide some information? I didn't really look at it too much though, so my apologies if its cursory or useless. Give me a couple of minutes and i'll try and dig(g) up a little more information...

edit -- you don't happen to have a manually created registry backup located somewhere on the drive, do you?

edit 2 -- btw, did you actually try a system restore?

[_sorrow_]

here is something from a text book i'm glancing at...

"When troubleshooting a failed boot, if System Restore does not work, the next tool to try is the Windows XP boot disk. If you boot from the disk and the Windows XP desktops loads successfully, then the problem is associated with a missing or damaged boot sector, master boot record, partition table, ntldr file, ntdetect.com file, ntbootdd.sys (if it exists), boot.ini file, or a virus infection. However, a boot disk cannot be used to troubleshoot problems associated with unstable device drivers or those that occur after the Windows XP logon screen is displayed."

[striker1211]

Safe mode still loads the system registry and the current user's profile. What safe mode does not do is load is video drivers and others. Dont quote me on this but i think the startup entries in the registry and startup folder are not executed also. It might hang during install because it cannot initialize the video drivers. Go into safe mode and reinstall them. I fixed a computer once that was hanging because of Alcohol 120%'s virtual drive driver being f'd up. So that's an option too. Contact me at contact@diggdown.net or post in this thread i guess.

[jon]

It just stays stuck at the windows logo screen. I can load into it using safe mode though.

Dang. I had the same problem when I tried to upgrade to SP2 a while back. I just went into safe mode and did a system recovery on it and it was fine. Not sure what happened, though.

[prophet737]

Windows will hang on that screen due to a missing or corrupt driver (.dll) file. a system restore in safe mode is your best bet but if you have restore turned off or for some reason it doesn't fix the problem (system restore doesn't always work for third party applications that run at startup) your next step is to boot into safe mode then go to start then run then type in msconfig hit enter. in the window that comes up click the startup tab at the top expand the command line column so you can see what's starting up with windows. Disable any of the programs you have personally installed ie nero adobe and whatnot since you are running windows xp you can disable all the boxes and not mess up your system which wasn't the case with earlier versions of windows. Now reboot and you should be able to log into windows xp home. now the tedious part comes when you run mscofig and add one thing at a time until you get the hang in the windows loading screen you may want to make a list of each file you disabled and the cross of the items as you reenable them until you get to the one causing the problem because trust me it's very easy to forget what you reenable in the breif time it takes to restart. when you do determine what is causing the hang uninstall the associated program and look for a newer or older version to install on your pc. If your unsure what the associated program is just google it with the info you have written down.

[striker1211]

Windows will hang on that screen due to a missing or corrupt driver (.dll) file. a system restore in safe mode is your best bet but if you have restore turned off or for some reason it doesn't fix the problem (system restore doesn't always work for third party applications that run at startup) your next step is to boot into safe mode then go to start then run then type in msconfig hit enter. in the window that comes up click the startup tab at the top expand the command line column so you can see what's starting up with windows. Disable any of the programs you have personally installed ie nero adobe and whatnot since you are running windows xp you can disable all the boxes and not mess up your system which wasn't the case with earlier versions of windows. Now reboot and you should be able to log into windows xp home. now the tedious part comes when you run mscofig and add one thing at a time until you get the hang in the windows loading screen you may want to make a list of each file you disabled and the cross of the items as you reenable them until you get to the one causing the problem because trust me it's very easy to forget what you reenable in the breif time it takes to restart. when you do determine what is causing the hang uninstall the associated program and look for a newer or older version to install on your pc. If your unsure what the associated program is just google it with the info you have written down.

Thanks for trying but that is a lot of really misplaced information. I say misplaced because it is good information for fixing crashes after the GUI loads, but not before. Entries in the registry and startup folder (not to mention autoexec and ini files) for spawning applications do not execute until after windows reaches an operable state. If windows is hanging during the boot screen it is a file system, hardware, or driver (which is .sys) issue. If you still havent fixed it start windows holding F8. Then select Enable Boot logging. If windows starts in safe mode check the file "C:\Windows\Ntbtlog.txt" in notepad and see what the last line was before the crash, paste it here actually. If you can't get into safe mode you're gonna have to find a knoppix cd or even Damn Small Linux (since its only 50 megs) and read the file. Good luck.

[playdeep]

Striker

I am having the same issues the original poster is/was having. My computer will hang onthe windows start up screen with the blue progress bar. It will flash like it is going to load windows but will go back to that same screen. System restores have proved useless.

When i read in your post that Alcohol 120% was what messed up the computer you had worked on in the past i guess i am thinking the same thing has happened to me.....i left to go to North Carolina over the last weekend and when i came back everything was fine until i rebooted the next morning and i had the above stated problems. I had installed alcohol 120% a few days before to mount an iso/disc image for a financial game (more of a program not a game per se) i used to own that one of my students walked off with. I was new to this kind of thing and nero didnt work so i had to get alcohol to make the program work correctly. I would very muhc appreciate your help as i think this is likely the cause of my issues.

[striker1211]

Well, from the description is see two possibilities:
1. It was alcohol 120. To fix this you will have to go into safe mode and simply uninstall it, do that by holding f8 down after your POST is finished, this is the screen that says stuff like "1xxxxx KB OK" or "AWARD BIOS" "AMI BIOS" and an energy star, etc. If safe mode hangs then choose "step by step" confirmation. Do not load the drivers "a347bus", it might be different numbers like "a348bus", and do not load a347scsi. If it loads after that you know it was alcohol and u can uninstal it in normal windows.

[edit] i think if you choose safe mode it will say something like "hit key to load a3**bus.sys, so just dont hit it and it shouldnt fail.
[edit2] confirmed, the boot menu for xp doesnt even have step by step anymore, follow advice of previous edit.

2. You say the screen flashes, then goes back to the loading screen. There are two reasons it would do this:
2a: Video card initialization failure. It tries to load the drivers, failed, tried using failsafes, and somehow failed there.
2b: You computer is restarting because of a STOP error (blue screen). If you have sp2 select disable automatic restart in the F8 menu and see what it says.

Try these things and let me know. Give me a ring on my email too so i see this thread.

[playdeep]

When i say it flashes....it is not a blue screen or anything...but rather it skips back to the black page with the windows logo and blue progress bar, and it does it fast so the skip is barely noticeable....I also am having no issues logging into safe mode with networking. Will getting rid of alcohol mess up the disc image iso i mounted? i figure it will since i thought it was a virtual drive that alcohol created, (not that it is working since safe mode has disabled most things)?

Sounds like the first step (since i do think it is alcohol) is to remove it in safe mode?

[striker1211]

If you uninstall alcohol it will not delete the image. I would recommend using daemon tools for that. Yes uninstall it in safe mode. If windows doesnt boot after that i will help you uninstall and reinstall your video drivers.