Can't Log In To Windows 2000 1

[burritonator]

I have a Windows 2000 PC that I can no longer log into. Below is a desscription of the problem, and the events that led up to it.

The system in question was functioning properly, and I installed a second hard drive (that was having problems) into the system as a slave to see if I could salvage any data off of it. That operation was successful, but after I removed the slave drive and restarted the system, I received a message following my login attempt that indicated that the Windows Page File is too small or doesn't exist. Instructions were given on how to correct that issue within WIndows, but the problem is, after I clicked "OK" on the error message, the system would always return to login screen.

At some point, the behavior changed slightly, in that the error message no longer appears. When I try to log in to Windows, I am simply thrown right back to the login screen, sometimes after two or three minutes, and sometime after just a few seconds. It doesn't seem to be a password issue, as I tried an invalid password just to see what would happen, and it was rejected. Whatever is going wrong is happening after the system verifies the username/password.

As a final note, perhaps the oddest thing about this situation is that if I reconnect the slave drive to the system, I can log in to Windows with no problem. The issue only occurs when the slave is removed, which returns the system to its original configuration.

Any and all help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[jimp56]

All simple and somewhat obvious suggestions, but lets cover the basics:
Have you run chkdsk yet? I would start with that.

Any chance that malware was on the slave drive?

Does the event viewer give any information regarding the reasons for the forced logoffs?

 

[tuco7]

When you removed the slave drive, did you first remove the drive from Device Manager, if not, put the drive back in and remove it first from Device Manager, then physicaly remove it from the conputer.

 

[wolluf]

Put the slave drive back & then check your page file settings in system properties. Make sure you have a page file defined on both drives (so there should definitely be one on your main drive when you restart without slave).

PS. What drive letter is eing assigned to the slave? Have you any other 'removable' drives with letters assigned?

 

[burritonator]

Here are the results of the troubleshooting that I have tried so far:

jimp56 - I haven't been able to check these things yet because now I can't log into Windows even with the slave drive connected (as there a way to check these things without logging in to Windows?)

tuco7 - Removing the slave drive within Device Manager and then disconnecting it prior to rebooting did not help.

wolluf - I did as you suggested and both drives do have a page file defined.

I checked the Disk Administration Utility, and I discovered that drive letter C: was being assigned to the slave, while E: was being assigned to the master. I changed the drive letter of the slave from C: to G:. Windows wouldn't allow me to manually change the drive letter of the master. Now when I restart the system, I can't log into Windows even when the slave drive is connected.

When I was viewing the Disk Admin Utility, I also noticed that the master drive's primary partition was labeled as "System", while the slave drive's primary partition was labeled as "Page File".

In light of this new information, does anyone have any additional suggestions?

Thanks in Advance

 

[jimp56]

my best suggestion to this point would be to try a repair install by booting to the win2k cd (hopefully you have it). it would retain programs and data but would reset most everything else, more than likely correcting the problem.

otherwise, i found a few links to try:

http://forums.techarena.in/archive/index.php/t-301114.html

http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?t=93043

the main gist seems to be verifying that the ntfs permissions are still set correctly, and also making sure the registry key governing the pagefile is set correctly, and to also put a different, formatted slave drive in.

 

[burritonator]

I had already tried the Win2k repair install, and that didn't help.

I checked the other threads that you provided links to, and the last post in one of those directed me to a boot-disk utility that would allow registry changes to be made from a command line. During the process of using that utility in order to try to try correct my problems, I noticed that the drive letter of the master HD was being reported as E:, even though it was the only HD connected the system.

I then checked the MS Knowledge Base article that described how to overcome the problem of not being able to log in after the master boot drive's drive letter had changed, and to make a long story short, booting from a Win98 boot disk, running "fdisk /mbr", and then restarting the PC corrected the issues and I am now able to log in to Windows normally.

To all of you who replied to my post, thanks for the assistance.