Member Avatar for Cerebral Assasi

Hey,

I am really pissed off coz my system only boots if i choose the Start Windows With The Last KNown GooD Configuration setting by hitting F8... if i boot normally... it just keeps showing the windows boot screen and the three lines keep running endlessly... help... ive tried everything short of a fresh reinstall or repair....

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Dani AI

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This behaves exactly like a registry/driver/service change that only affects a normal boot: Last Known Good loads the last successful set of system/service registrations, so if normal boot hangs at the splash while LKG works, the culprit is usually a driver or a boot-time service (not a hardware IRQ you can see in Device Manager). was right to suspect drivers, and ’s System Restore can help — but since already tried those and the problem persists, try a targeted diagnostic workflow next.

  • Boot to Safe Mode (or low‑resolution/VGA mode). If Safe Mode starts, check the System log in Event Viewer for driver/service errors and use a clean-boot technique to disable non‑Microsoft services/startup items to narrow the offender.
  • Enable Boot Logging from the F8 menu, let the machine try a normal boot, then check the boot log at C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt for drivers marked “Not Loaded” or errors. That file frequently names the offending .sys file.
  • If a specific third‑party .sys is listed, boot recovery media or Safe Mode and rename that driver (examples below) so Windows cannot load it; reboot to test:
ren C:\Windows\System32\drivers\offender.sys offender.sys.bak

Do this only for third‑party drivers you can identify.

  • Run a full disk check (chkdsk /r) from recovery media to rule out file corruption, and examine any minidumps if a crash occurs.
  • As a last diagnostic before reinstall, use Driver Verifier (enable only non‑Microsoft drivers) to force a failure and capture the exact failing driver, then reset with verifier /reset when done. This is aggressive and will cause a stop error on the bad driver.

Common culprits are antivirus/filter drivers, video or network drivers, and recently installed USB/peripheral drivers. Always back up user data before making changes or doing a repair install. If logs show a specific .sys or Event ID, that single clue usually leads to a simple replace/rollback of one driver instead of a full reinstall.

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Member Avatar for MartyMcFly

Sounds like you have some problems with a driver.

From Windows, select Run and type "devmgmt.msc" to run device manager.

Go through your devices, and try and look for any problems, (maybe highlighted with ! or ? ). Uninstall and reinstall drives with any problems you find. Other than that, maybe running a repair on your installation might be a good idea.

Member Avatar for goldeagle2005

Or try restoring your computer to a previous known working restore point using System Restore. You may need to re install any apps you installed after this point was created.

Member Avatar for Cerebral Assasi

done all that... and when i do system restore the system just starts up and continues in that booting mode... then i have to reset and sel last good known config... no hardware irq probs whatsoever no highlighted dev manager nd all.... waitin for some sol before i run winxp bootdisk to repair.. thats ma last resort... :) papa roach...:cheesy:

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