Written from the kitchen table

[kinzel]

I'm writing this from the kitchen table, via Haysus the Asus, while the "big machine" in my office is going through a Windows nervous breakdown, telling me that, multiple times, that "we're sorry, Windows did not start normally" ....

This is not good news on account of I don't want to have to reinstall every single bit of software I have on that sucker in case there really is a problem ...if it doesn't route through to the desktop this time I'll move the box and push all the add-on cards, memory, and etc to make sure nothing urgent vibrated free during the overnight ...


UPDATED ...

the "return system to factory default" option seems open, but that's the pits ....
I have grabbed the most recent work on theo from the back-up drive, which is looking precious ......
sigh

Comments

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

When my husband and I had to use the "fresh from the factory" restore point, it erased all of our programs, but deliberately left anything it could identify as documents alone. Which sucks, yes, but not *quite* as badly as having it nuke absolutely everything. (Not that I am saying that you should trust it to leave your documents alone, without trying to secure what backups you can, but you may not lose as much as you fear.)

Our experience is here (http://jerusha.livejournal.com/8175.html), for what it's worth.

[zola.livejournal.com]

Did you try starting in safe mode?

Did you try starting with the disk in the drive, choosing the repair option and running chkdsk?

Is this XP or Vista? If you like, you can call and we can try some stuff...

[srmpublisher.livejournal.com]

When I try to start in safe mode ...
it goes around again to the same screen.

I've tried safe, safe with command line, safe with networking, and normal...
and each time we go through the countdown ...and get the same screen.

can't get to a command prompt to do a chkdsk, alas ...

It looks like I have many important files appropriately backed-up ... but I don't/haven't been doing hourly back-ups or any such so some of those are 72 hours to a week behind.

[zola.livejournal.com]

This is going to sound stupid, but trade keyboards!

If you tried safe with command line, you ought to be getting a prompt. If you are going through the countdown, that seems to suggest to me that the computer isn't even getting the signal that it's supposed to start in safe mode command prompt, and a keyboard driver issue or broken keyboard would do that.

That at least costs nothing to try... :)

well...

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

I've tried several keyboards ..this old one is working through a linux livcd on the computer in question...no safe prompt, no command prompt in Windows...

I'm writing o the Asus eeepc netbook nd will try to revive this thing later

Re: well...

[zola.livejournal.com]

Okay.

Now a couple of questions. First of all, is it a usb keyboard? Are the keyboards you tried USB keyboards? I ask this simply because if you plug in another keyboard that is USB, the driver doesn't install right away so you can't use it.

I'd like to find out if it's keyboard related at all, this test is really easy. Unplug the keyboard and start the computer up. If it starts up Windows, we know there's something awry with the keyboard driver, and you can likely remove that driver in the control panel with the mouse, then plug the keyboard back in and reboot. If it makes no difference, we've lost nothing.

You said something about being able to get into BIOS. Look and make sure it's recognizing all the disks, and then find the tab that has the booting order on it. Make sure it's saying to boot the cd drive first.

Once it is, stick your windoze cd in there and restart, this OUGHT to give you the repair option. If you have a OEM version with special stuff, see if you can borrow a regular XP disk from someone nearby--all you want to do is run the repair, which is actually just a command prompt that lets you run stuff like chkdsk. If you type in help at the prompt, it gives you your list of commands.

This really sounds like a corrupted file or what have you... as I said, you can call me to walk you through a couple of tests if you like.

[muehe.livejournal.com]

Probably to late for suggestions, but.
Did you try starting up in safe mode?
Before you go into any extreme measure -- pull your hard drive and copy the "important" files onto another machine. Of, course that does not help with the installed programs. I guess I am assuming you have access to another machine.
Windows does have a fix OS on the disk I have. A couple of times it fixed everything up real nice. One time it made it worse. Had to do a complete re-install.

[muehe.livejournal.com]

Did you get it fixed?

recovering xp

[(Anonymous)]

If it isn't too late look at microsoft knowledge base article 307545. This allowed me to save a couple of machines without data-loss. You will also almost certainly need 309531 as well.

Richard.

Re: recovering xp

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Richard -- thanks for the links.

The thing is, the box in question *does* have an OEM supplied OS with recovery info, so it has already been messed with. In keeping with the freelancer's lifestyle we bought the display model at Staples several years ago and didn't have time to reinstall, but the time I had time I had too much on there to mess with ...

Re: recovering xp

[(Anonymous)]

I had horrible feeling that this was the case. The symptoms you are getting are the same as I have had with hive file corruption but I am unsure what the effect of having an oem build is.

Microsoft seem to be worried you could find yourself without working admin passwords.

I suspect that despite microsofts warnings that you could get away without replacing security.sam.

I would however say that before going down this route you need to make sure you have back-ups of everything on the drive. Which could be easier said than done since that may require removeing the drive and hooking it up to another machine.

Richard