I need some help...Windows 2000 boot problems.

/usr

Got a call this morning that a Windows 2000 desktop would not boot. I've tried everything.

I'm getting a stop error on boot, the machine blue screens and reboots, over and over again. I got into the machine using Safe Mode one time, but now it just hangs. Last Known Good hangs as well.

I took the drive out, hooked it up as a slave on another machine, and ran chkdsk with no luck.

The drive is not physically bad. I can still access all the files when it's hooked up as a slave.

Does anyone know of any utility (like an .iso I can burn...) that will let me boot this machine with the absolute bare minimum, just so I can take a look at services and such?

dynamik

Can you boot off the CD and go into the recovery console?

Also, can you resort to a repair installation? That should keep most things intact and give you a working OS.

I don't remember ever having to do this stuff with 2000, so those might be new additions to XP.

[edit]
Windows 2000 Recovery Console: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229716

/usr

They don't know the admin password, so unless I resort to some utility (that I don't have immediately available) to change the admin password, that won't work.

I thought about doing a repair install...but I don't want to hose their data.

Lee H

You say you piggy backed it into an other PC, then do this again and back there files up to that PC

Re-install windows again and then put there files back

Most of the time blue screens cannot be fixed, common saying "blue screen of death"

Hope this helps

Lee H

dynamik

Have you ever done a repair installation before? It keeps all the data/installed programs, etc.

I'd back the drive up to another machine then go that route.

Here's a guide: http://www.windows2000.windowsreinstall.com/Repair/

shednik

how important is the pc configuration...can it easily be replicated?

If not i'd boot into something like bartpe and change the registry value for the pc to not reboot after a system error...

Once this happens research the error it may take awhile to repair but it can be done unless its a hardware failure...

I've had a few where it wasnt worth the effort to repair...but when source code was on a pc and not backed up on our network i spent my entire day uninstalling the patches from the night before in recovery console to fix the pc...

So there's a chance you can recover you just need the stop code error...

dynamik

Also, in my experience, blue screens typically occur as a result of a missing file, wrong driver, misconfigured service, etc. You can usually find out what caused it through logs or from the BSoD itself, and then fix it through the recovery console.

JDMurray

This sounds like the type of problem that SpinRite fixes. The hardware on the drive and disk controller is fine, chkdsk reports no errors, but the low-level encoding on the disk itself has become weak or messed up. SpinRite fixes just this sort of thing.

However, I do agree that bluescreens typically indicate a problem with a hardware device or driver. Try booting from the drive with no peripherals connected to the computer. There's also the possibility that something on the motherboard went bad and that's upsetting Win2000.

/usr

I tried booting the drive in another machine with the same results, just so I could rule out hardware.

I got the machine back up by doing a repair install.

Of course, the machine is just as useless now as it was when I had it hooked up as a slave, since every single program is unusable until you reinstall.

/usr

Any clue why, after recovery, this machine is booting and assigning as the drive letter? I can't open any apps, I assume because it's looking in C:, but can't find it.

It's the only drive in the system and C: is not being used by anything...

/usr

And why, when I hook up a slave to the machine to try and get the drives to reorder, the master takes and C: goes to the slave...

JDMurray

By default in Windows, drive letters are assigned based on the order of the drives on the IDE bus and the order of the partitions on the drives. A single drive with two partitions will default to C: and . Add a second drive with a single partition and that drive's partition becomes and the second partition of the first drive changes from to E:.

The drive letters under Windows are arbitrary. You can change then to whatever you want using Disk Manager. I always use G: for the boot partition of my servers.