Cannot boot XP

[Zeke801]

About a week ago I made a thread on this forum regarding some virus stuff. It may ormay not be related. Google suggests that I may have possibly gotten a HaxDoor virus, but if I did I don't really have a way of getting rid of it without being able to boot my computer. I'm fairly sure that *isn't* the problem, however, due to never having the primary symptom of it: something about a log being created and to help Microsoft out by sending it, or something.

It can be found here:
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread153184.html

This issue was not yet resolved at the time of crash, and has mostly been put on hold for now due to the whole not being able to boot thing.

Anyway. I am assuming while a virus may not help, that it is not the thing stopping me from being able to boot. That said, onto my situation:

Well the other day I was playing a game and my computer suddenly crashed with a bluescreen. Not entirely sure what all it said, in all honesty I didn't read much since it happens to other people sometimes and they usually come right back. From what I understood it was likely a memory dump, or something.

Anyway. As a reult I now get a stop error message 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x04682DE, 0xF78BD85C, 0x00000000)

I've tried booting in safe mode, I always get this same stop error. I've tried last known good configuration, same thing, and of course normal mode is the same thing. I began to think I had a corrupt boot file, so I tried booting from a floppy. I used Command Prompt to use the following commands after formatting the floppy disk:
xcopy c:\boot.ini a: /h
xcopy c:\ntdetect.com a: /h
xcopy c:\ntldr a: /h

So I copied over boot.ini, ntdetect.com, and ntldr. When inserting this into my problematic machine, it told me it could not boot due to missing the file "hal.dll".

I then tried to use the XP CD (apparently setup CD does not equal a bootable CD) to boot, and it would not simply boot, but took me into setup. I decided to go with the flow and it told me that "it could not detect an installed hard drive", when I selected the option to try and repair the XP installation, as opposed to creating a new one, again with the goal of trying to keep information intact.

The strange part, to me, is that the setup menu still detects the drive and gives me all the basic information. 80 gigabytes, the code, specs etc

I've tried swapping SATA cables (I had a spare) and to no avail, it still tells me it cannot find a drive connected.

This is becoming sort of problematic. What I'm wanting to do is recover information from the drive that's rather important (and I didn't have the foresight to backup), make backups, and reformat the drive. Reformatting is easy enough (maybe? assuming I can get the drive recognized, but I believe that's the core of the problem), I'm just trying to get it "back to normal" so to speak, even if temporarily.

In setup i've tried turning the drive on and off, and nothing. I had a bluescreen problem about 18-24 months ago that was fixed via changing the SATA opertation from RAID/Autodetect otherwise AHCI, to Combination, and back, and it was fixed with all information intact (likely due to never having used RAID), and tried that this time, although this time it did not work.

But after all that that, and still having no results, one of the main things that puzzles me is tha my system setup menu detects it, but when running XP setup to repair, it does not detect the drive.

Does anyone recognize the problem/have any ideas that could help? I unfortunately don't have a lot of extra money to pay Geek Squad to just hand it to 'em and say "fix it", not to mention I'm not entirely ure if they offer refunds if I can't get the drive's information off of it.

An afterthought after all this - would it be possible to put the drive on a seperate computer (with the same operating system, XP home edition), and attempt to access it with aforementioned computer's primary drive still running? I wonder if it would help: One, to see if my drive is recognized by a computer that is working fine. and two, to see if any information is accessible. Would that be possible or would the fact both drives have an OS be a problem?

[Kraai]

Well, to answer your last question. Yes, you can take out your hard drive and slave it to another computer to get hold of your data. If done correctly, it should show up on the other computer's cpanel as a drive D or similar like Drive C. Just make sure you know the basics on how to remove your harddrave, how to change the pins to set it to slave, and how to install it in the other computer.

[Zeke801]

Alright, that's definately good to know, although even if I recover the data, I'm still faced with the problem of not being able to reformat it on the original machine, I think.

[Zeke801]

I kind of have an update. Unfortunately this machine is an IDE so I can't put the drive on it to get the data and reformat.

ANyway. I think the reason the setup CD told me I don't have any hard drives was actually because I turned off using them as a boot device to make sure the CD was used instead, and as a result I'm fairly sure that's why they wouldn't boot.

So I put them back on the boot sequence list, below CD-ROM, and I got to the point where it said Press any key to boot from cd...

And I did. It began booting, much like it was booting without a CD. It gave me the safe mode/last good config/normal options, and once again I tried all three and got the same error message.

[Kraai]

OK, so there is progress. You should remember you have about 5 seconds to do the "press any key from cd...." if missed, it will boot from your drive.

[Zeke801]

No progress. After making sure the hard drives were still on the boot list (after CD-ROM of course), and attempting a repair again, it once again told me that there were no drives installed.

[Kraai]

Alright, that's definately good to know, although even if I recover the data, I'm still faced with the problem of not being able to reformat it on the original machine, I think.

Did you try to do a format of the drive on the second machine perhaps?

[Kraai]

No progress. After making sure the hard drives were still on the boot list (after CD-ROM of course), and attempting a repair again, it once again told me that there were no drives installed.

You may also try to power off your pc, and then disconnect the backup battery from the mobo, disconnect and reconnect HD, wait a couple of minutes, and then reconnect, power up and reboot.

[magic_mikey]

Have you checked the raid/sata drivers? The standard XP cd does not contain raid drivers.
Also is it XP home or XP Pro, I once had a similar problem with XP Home. I was trying to set up raid and found that xp home has no support for raid. The machine would boot the the black windows screen and then restart, the resolution was to disable raid in the bios.

[jbennet]

or integrate the chipset drivers using nlite

[Zeke801]

Ok, some more info that may be useful. When attempting to boot in Safe Mode, it always stops at agpCPQ.sys before bluescreening with the same error as always.

I'm using XP home, and also I don't have my drives set up for RAID - they're on autodetect but definately not using RAID. And yeah I did try to switch to the definate non-raid mode (combination) and all it does is make it bluescreen sooner. The stop message is different: ***STOP 0x0000007B (0xF78BE524, 0x00000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Tried it on all modes and nada. So combination mode appears to be a no go.

No idea about how to integrate chipset drivers or what nlite is though.

[magic_mikey]

Sounds like it could be a graphics driver error. Is it a HP?

Nlite is a good tool and is easy to use step by step it will allow you to intergrate the correct drivers for both your chipset and graphics card. It can be downloaded from http://www.nliteos.com/download.html and is free. Source the drivers and slipstream them into xp

[Zeke801]

It's a Dell - my GPU is a standard nVidia Geforce 6800. I have 2 gigs of ram.

My question now though is how would I go about using it when unable to boot? Do I put it on a floppy and it's independent or something?

Also, you are probably right that it's a graphics driver error I was playing a rather memory intensive game due to poor optimization (Everquest 2) when the first crash occurred.

How do I use the program, though? Or is it self explanatory? And how do I know which drivers are correct?

(Never heard of this tool so no idea how to use/what I need to do, sorry! :x)

[jbennet]

Its a dell??? - the boot device selection may be broken.

Ive got an e510 and even if i put cd first , it never boots from it. You have to hit (its either f2 or f11 or something, its a different menu to the BIOS one) its called something like "choose temporary boot device".

[magic_mikey]

Nlite is fairly staight forward to use. When it is "locating the windows instilation" browse to your original xp cd in the cd/dvd rom, next tell it where to save the copy and then finish. Nlite will close and need to be opened again. This time when "locating" browse to the folder you have save the copy in click next and chose the type of intergration you need (drivers) locate the already downloaded drivers and tell it to intergrate, then burn the cd.

The dell web site will provide all the drivers you require in the support section, you can search for your model or the easy way is to search by your service tag. I personally find the Nvidia graphincs driver better than the dell, from the Nvidia website.

Before you try nlite have you used the delldiag? Press f12 at the bios start up and then select diagnositcs, this goes through a complete system test and should give you some dell error codes. It does take a while to complete (aprox 2 hours last time I ran it) and you need to be there to record any errors, beepcodes and answer yes or no to some tests.

Also does the machine have any onboard graphics? You could try taking out the GF6800 and booting up using the onboard vga.