Not Starting

[janderson622]

Hi,

I rebooted my personal Windows 2000 Pro computer today, and now it doesn't boot. I missed an error message that came up, so I'm not sure what that error was.

The system shows the manufacturer logo, the edit the MBA and the Press N to boot from the Network prompts, then just goes to the blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

I tried powering down and waiting 20 minutes to power it up, I've checked the BIOS, everything is fine on that (I thought maybe a HDD was lost in the BIOS).

Any thoughts on how I can get back into my system?

Thanks.


--John

 

[butchrecon]

If you can the error (Does it come back with each boot?) that would be helpful. James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[janderson622]

Hi,

Nope, here's what happened:

- the computer was running oddly, it hadn't been rebooted in about 3 weeks
- i rebooted the computer
- it ran thru win2000's "diskscan"
- showed the "windows 2000" startup screen
- it popped up a blue screen with an error code.
- as a side note, I've had this happen before and rebooting again solved it
- I just rebooted the computer again.
- now when I reboot it, it comes up with the manufactured logo, a couple of other little messages, and then I get a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

I don't know what to do.

Any / all suggestions would be apprecatied.


--John

 

[butchrecon]

Can you boot into safe mode? James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[janderson622]

No, I'm not even getting to the "select OS" page.

Thoughts?

Thanks.


--John

 

[butchrecon]

If you hit thr F8 key a few times after the initial Post screen (When it states verifying DMI pool) does the option come up then? James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[janderson622]

That doesn't do it either.

I get 2 prompts,

"Initializing MBA. Hit Ctrl-Alt-B to configure"
"Hit N for Network boot"

Tried both of them, neither one work, also, when I hit F8 all it does is clear thru those 2 prompts. (In other words, the Hit Ctrl-Alt one comes up, it will setup for 30 to 45 seconds, if I hit F8 it clears that prompt and pushes me to the N for Network boot prompt).


Thanks.

--John

 

[butchrecon]

Have you tried booting from the CD and choosing the repair option? James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[janderson622]

Hi,

I used the CD and the ERD to try to recover the Win2000 install. This is the error I got:

Setup has determined Drive C: is corrupted and cannot continue.

Any thoughts?

Let me know your thoughts on this.

I have a couple other machines around (I'm at work), I am thinking of putting the hard drive from my computer in another Win2000 computer as a "slave" and see if I can pull the data off. (That's all I'm worried about at this point, I don't care if Win2000 is gone beyond repair).

Do you forsee any problems with that theory? Both systems are NTFS.

Thanks.


--John

 

[ngagne]

I would put the drive in as a slave to another 2k machine and run a scandisk on it that way. You should definately run a virus scan. Nate Gagne
ngagne@numa-inc.com

 

[janderson622]

Hi,

I set the jumpers on both drives and put my current hard drive in as a slave to another Win2K machince. (all IDE).

When I boot I get part way thru the progress bar and get this error:

"Stop: 0xF281B84C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000 INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

This only happens what I have the slaved drive installed.

Now a couple of dumb questions that I know I know the answers to:

- The Slave drive should be in the middle of the IDE cable MOBO on one end and Master drive on the other, correct?

- Both drives are Western Digital so there should be no conflict, correct?

- Does it matter that the first machine I had was an IBM and I'm putting the old hard drive into a Dell?

- I decided to try to go the ERD route, so I tried to create an ERD (by unplugging the slave drive, the machine boots to Win2K), but I can't seem to make the floppy work.

Anyone have any thoughts? Is there an easy way to test if the hard drive I'm trying to salvage is physically dead?

Thanks.


--John