AGP440.sys hang on boot

[swns]

Good evening everyone,

I have been looking here and searching google but so far have found no help.

I have an XP Pro PC that hangs at AGP440.sys when trying to boot into safe mode, when try to boot normally get a reboot loop.
The lowdown so far, I was able to get into safe mode yesterday, uninstalled SP2 and booted fine, udpated the video card drivers and the BIOS reinstalled SP2 and now I can not even get to safe mode, computer justs hangs displaying agp440.sys.

Am I barking up the wrong tree with video andchipset/bios?

What else can I try, I really need to save this computer.

Also when I try to run recovery console it tells me there is no hard drive found, same thing if I try to reinstall.
Hard drive is SATA.

PLEASE HELP?!?!

 

[zephyran]

I have seen this when trying to install a drive image that was made on a computer with a different motherboard. Have you done any imaging, or tried swapping an OS hard drive between PCs? Have you added or removed any hardware lately?

If you haven't done any of that, then it's possible that that HAL somehow got a corruption that didn't really manifest itself until you installed SP2. I would suggest you get it bootable again by uninstalling SP2, back up all files/applications you need to keep, and update all drivers and firmware. Once that's done, try upgrading to SP2 again.

If that doesn't work, your best bet is to probably reinstall XP, install all the latest drivers, and then immediately install SP2. Once that's done, restore all the files/applications you backed up earlier.



There's no "I" in "TEAM".
But there's no "U" either.
So if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then nobody's on the team!

 

[swns]

No images used and no hardware has changed, I can't get into the OS in safe mode or any other way and I can't re-install because it doesn't pick up the hard drive when booting from the disc?

What do I do now??

 

[zephyran]

Check all your connections and make sure the drive is firmly plugged in for both data and power. As it's a SATA drive, make sure that you aren't using both standard and SATA power connections on it (if the drive has both). Also, try connecting to different SATA channels on the controller.

If none of that works, try reseating your SATA controller if it's a separate card.

There's no "I" in "TEAM".
But there's no "U" either.
So if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then nobody's on the team!

 

[swns]

Checked and rechecked, I have only tried 2 of 4 channels and this is all on the MOBO.
Is there something in the bios for serial drives?
Its an asus k8v board with ami bios, if that helps.

 

[zephyran]

I don't have experience with that specific board - I would go into the BIOS and see if there's anything listed under options like "Advanced Chipset", "Peripherals", etc.

Or, you can try loading the "Optimized Defaults" (if that option exists) and see if it restores the proper settings.

One more thing - make sure your CMOS battery is good (i.e. see if your BIOS retains the correct time and date after a cold boot). I've seen dead CMOS batteries cause very strange symptoms.

There's no "I" in "TEAM".
But there's no "U" either.
So if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then nobody's on the team!

 

[swns]

CMOS battery is good, there does not seem to be anything in the bios that is helpful and I only have the option to load setup defaults.

 

[tlcscousin]

Have you tried starting with the OS cd in the cd drive and start setup and enter recovery console. When in the recovery console run
chkdsk /p

restart after it completes and see if windows now starts.

 

[swns]

I have tried the recovery console but it does not pick up the hard drive and so quits. What does /p do with chkdsk?

 

[allteltec]

You need to have the Sata drives on floppy and when booting from the CD 5-20 sec in to the boot watch the screen for hit," I think it's F6" to load raid or scsi drivers. hit F6 and load the sata drivers then the recovery console will see the HD. Some bios's also had a option to make a sata drive look like a IDE drive to the OS.

 

[tlcscousin]

/p performs an exhaustive check of the drive.It supposedly does not makes changes on the drive but so far i have used it 4 times on machines that wont start into indows and after chkdsk completed have been able to get the systems to start into windows again.

 

[swns]

I finally found the drivers and got into recovery consoile, disabled agp440 and nothing changed. Am running chkdsk now will let yopu know how it turns out.

 

[swns]

ran recovery console did chkdsk /p and chkdsk /r to no avail, ran repair which crashes with errors so I still can not get this system to boot.
I do not have much hair left if anyone can help.

 

[zephyran]

You said the SATA controller is on the motherboard. Does the BIOS have settings available for SATA drives? If not, do you have a secondary POST that comes up during/after the BIOS POST, that looks more like a SCSI startup? If you get a secondary "Press X-Y for Setup" after your BIOS POST, try that and see what you get.

There's no "I" in "TEAM".
But there's no "U" either.
So if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then nobody's on the team!

 

[tlcscousin]

If you run bootlog option and then if you can access the files using something like a bartpecd you can look at the bootlog.txt to see what is actually not starting .

 

[karlisi]

It's nothing with agp440.sys. It is only the last driver shown on screen in safe mode load process. I had similar issues many times and every time it ends with repairing from Windows CD.

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA

 

[swns]

I tried repair from the cd and disabled agp440 from the recovery console and karlisi is right it has nothing to do with agp440, I installed windows to anew directory so I could at least recover the files that the client required, but it would be nice figure out what is actually happening.
I am going to continue to work on this one slowly now as the client has the files they needed so I now have some time, will keep everyone here posted if I find anything useful to share.

Thanks to everyone for their input and help

 

[karlisi]

Try to open corrupted installation's event log from working system, perhaps there is something useful.

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA