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BSOD on startup

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chronics

Programmer
Sep 10, 2006
35
GB
Hi Can anyone tell me if there is a way to view a BSOD message that occurs before pc boots into windows. I cannot get into safe mode, so I cant disable automatic restarts. I know that the crash control key can be altered in the registry but how to I edit the registry. BartPE desnt seem to have the crash control key and I dont know if its possible to change the value in Recovery Console.

Any help would be much appreciated
 
Note sure what the command is but try running a CHKDSK from within recovery console.

Regards
Mike

MCSA
 
Actually windows doesnt see the HDD so recovery console does not work. This may be because of sata drivers or faulty hdd, but what i really wanted to know for future reference is if its actually possible to stop windows rebooting automatically when it crashes without actually booting into windows.
thanks anyway
 
Hi,

Under System Properties, advanced TAB, select settings on Startup and Recovery.

Mike

MCSA
 
Hi,

You said for ruture reference was there a way, under the above you can set the way windows deals with a system failure.

If you want to try to recover your existing you will have to get the Sata Drivers for your Drive and boot into recovery console.

I have had this happen many times in the past and most times running chkdsk has fixed this issue.

Mike

MCSA
 
If this Registry crash control key that you talk about is in either of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_USERS Hives it should be possible to access it from BartPE via loading those Hives.

These two articles in the RegEdit Help are a good explanation of the process.

To load a hive into the registry
To unload a hive from the registry

The hard drive manufacturer will have free diagnostic software of a bootable kind that should be able to thoroughly check the condition of your drive.
 
Hi

Its actually a HP Pavillion dv2000 Series laptop. It has a fujitsu hdd which I have run the diagnostic on from the bios. This had no problems, I will also try the fujitsu diagnostic on ubcd.

I dont think the drive has any physical errors as I connected it to a pc via an external usb enclosure and it came up with 2 partitions, a local disk partition and a recovery partition. The recovery partition was fine but the Local disk partition came up with a corrupt and unreadable file system error(not exact words).

Does this mean the mft is damaged. I will load the sata drivers and run chkdsk through recovery console but im not confident the recovery console will be able to access the partition.

Crash Control is in Local Machine\\CurrentControlSet\.
How do I load this hive in BartPe

Thanks
 
If you can get to the safe mode menu, assuming you've at least SP2, there's an option to disable restart on error - so BSOD should stay onscreen for you to read.

If you've connected the drive via external enclosure, why don't you run chkdsk from there?! If diagnostic says its ok, sounds like the actual partition has got scrambled - chkdsk may be able to do something with it - if not you're probably looking at data recovery (if you need data from it) and a reinstall.
 
If you've connected the drive via external enclosure, why don't you run chkdsk from there?!
I'll second that notion.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein
 
I am sure I have loaded "damaged XP" Hives from BartPE (if it can see the XP Partition on Sata).

Adding Sata Driver Support To Bartpe

If I remember correctly BartPE comes with a working version of RegEdit, also there are some third party Registry Editing plugins available from Bart's site.
 
Actually windows doesnt see the HDD so recovery console does not work. This may be because of sata drivers or faulty hdd
you at least narrowed it down... my believe is that the used SATA driver is a faulty, or the wrong one...

I see two options:

1.) as mentioned use BartPE with the correct SATA drivers, to edit the Registry hives...

2.) perform a REPAIR install, using the correct SATA drivers, (useful here would be the make of the laptop, so that someone could point you towards the correct driver)... There also may be a setting in the BIOS that sets an emulation of the SATA ports as IDE, which XP will be happy with...

Repair Install HowTo:

also since you do not have a FDD, it may be necessary to slipstream the SATA drivers into XP, to do so, you can use nLite...

nLite

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
 
I attempted to run chkdsk from within windows but when i clicked on start nothing happened. I,ve tried BartPE with Sata drivers it shows the partition as completely empty.

I actually loaded the sata drivers via a floppy to see what windows would see if I attempted to reload and it sees the partition as completely free and not a windows partition. In the end I actually used the GetDataBackNtfs program having mounted the drive via an enclosure to a system running XP pro. The program managed to recover all the data.

Relating to my original question BartPe doesnt seem to have the CrashControl Key or a lot of other key I normally see in Local Machine\CurrentControlSet. Is there any other way to edit the registry to stop the pc automaticaly rebooting and allow me to read the bsod if i cant get into windows(including safe mode).

Thanks
 
BartPe doesnt seem to have the CrashControl Key or a lot of other key I normally see in Local Machine\CurrentControlSet.
of course not if you edit BartPE's own registry... see the link below on how to edit the registry of XP that is on the HDD...

How to edit the Registry using BartPE...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
 
Thanks BadBigBen

My problem was that there was nothing in my c: drive. But i now have a better understanding of bartpe registry for next time.
 
You're welcome...

hope it works out for you now...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
 
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