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XP cannot load on install

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Norgermish

Norgermish

Technical User
Sep 1, 2006
51
US
Thanks for looking at this thread,
Yesterday my brother brought me his Dell Dimension B110 desktop. The info I have is scant but apparently it had some big virus problems and someone tried to clean it but they seem to have messed with more than necessary, or the virus destroyed the boot file. At this point it starts and just loops through the boot screen, a quick flash on the screen has the NTDETECT not found. When I try to run the repair console off the cd I get passed initial setup of files and before any options are given there is a message the usbehci.sys file is corrupted. I was hoping to get in and repair the boot file and see what else is wrong but I can't get anywhere on this thing. For the heck of it I tried to install WIN 7 but WIN 7 setup it doesn't even detect the hard drive. I have no option where to install WIN 7...
Any help would be greatly appreciated
 
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Have you tried running a repair install? That is let the Windows XP CD install over the existing installation?

It should not affect any files or installed programs, and will replace any corrupted files with fresh working versions of themselves.

Other than that can you boot in Safe mode?



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
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I have tried to do a repair install but all I get once passed the initial set up with the XP cd, there is no option to choose any install. Press F2 if I want to use ASR but there is no floppy on this computer and I don't have the disks for it anyway. Once it gets passed initial set up load, the screen comes up with usbehci.sys is corrupted press any key to continue. I press enter or whatever and all it does then is restart and back through set up to the corrupted file error again. So I cannot get to the Repair option. I wanted to try and rebuild the boot.ini, which I believe I could get it to boot if that was fixed, but I can't get that far.

No Safe mode capability either.

 
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Do yourself a favor and check the hard drive with the manufacturer's utility to make sure it's okay before you go to all the trouble and struggle to get any O.S. installed. "Hardware problems will always trump software fixes."

If it's not to late to save the windows installation:
With that said, if the "repairer" ran Combofix (wild guess), it could have whacked a system file and not replaced it. You can determine this by booting up with a boot CD and look to see if there is a QooBox folder in the root of the C: drive. If so, there will be logs to tell you what Combofix did.

Pay attention to any windows\system32\ files that were infected and deleted/replaced. You may want to replace that file with a known good copy.
 
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BigBadBen: The only setting in the BIOS for hard drive is IDE drive UDMA on/off

On the OS install I don't really care if anything from the old system is saved/destroyed/lost it is of no consequence at this point. According to my brother so many files were apparently damaged by the virus they are probably worthless anyway.
Thanks for any help :)
 
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goombawaho:
I did check the hard drive with utilities IDE drive passed. I did pull out an old drive from my garage that I used to run W2K on. I thought I would plug it in and see what happened, well I got W2K up and running, had to repair that installation as well. Something I couldn't do a few years back. Anyway it installed fine on the old drive. I don't know what to do from here.

The hard drive is good but I still get the same errors above when I try to install XP or Win 7.
 
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it installed fine on the old drive
Click to expand...
and
The hard drive is good
Click to expand...
actually that is the indication that the NEW drive is NOT good...

I would suggest to go ahead and replace that drive and be done with it. You could use try to NUKE that drive completely, using DBAN, before you ditch it, as a last resort.

I've seen a drive (brand spanking new) that installed the OS (Linux and XP) just fine, but would not boot up, turned out to be a defective MBR sector which could not be repaired, and all the diag software we had passed that drive with flying colors...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"
 
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The OP's system, from original post:

So, no SATA drives, just to make sure that's clear (barring someone has added in a PCI SATA card, which I doubt).

As Ben suggests, the chances are, it's your hard drive. If you want, you can get a new hard drive. Whatever you do, with the age of the system, I'd suggest not putting much money into the hard drive. I'd get one as cheap as possible, unless you're determined to keep using the system.

Here are some suggestions, balancing price and performance:
That's a WD Blue Hard drive with IDE connection, so it'll work. It's 160GB, so it's likely your system will detect the whole thing. Also, total comes to just over $50, so though it's not a steal, it's still pretty cheap.

A used 40GB IDE Hard drive for about $30 incl shipping on Amazon Marketplace.

Between the two, if at all possible, I'd go with the new one at $50. It's a $20 difference for a MUCH larger, likely MUCH faster, and brand new (with warranty) hard drive. That's a good thing, b/c if you ever decide to part with the desktop, or it just dies, you can still keep that hard drive, and have it covered under warranty - I think the WD Blues come with 3 year warranties.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
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BigBadBen,
I used DBAN and nuked the drive. Still come up with a message the "the file usbehci.sys file is corrupted." Same message as originally posted. Is this a type of message from a bad HDD/MBR sector? Strange even after "nuking", it still has the same message. I am using a Dell install cd.
Thank you

kjv1611,
Correct no SATA drives. I do have a couple new 80g SATA drives out in my garage though. Can they be used? Cable adapters available?
Thanks for the links to the drives.
 
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If you want to use SATA drives, the best option (probably) is to get a PCI SATA controller card. That'll give you the best results. I'm not sure if you can use an adapter to go SATA hard drive to IDE PATA mobo connection... I know you can go the other direction.

I've still got a whole stack of these cards (3 port and 5 port variations):

I'm using 1 in my sort of home network file server. It's more of an extra Windows XP desktop with a RAID storage array. It's worked out really well. Even though the PCI bus limits the total speed, I've had super fast results with accessing/browsing/transferring/managing files in the local machine as well as over my home network. Of course, the drives attached aren't slackers - WD ...AAKS 500GB hard drives. They've worked out really well so far - 3+ or maybe over 4 by now - years. Before that, I had 2 cards in one machine. 1 RAID 0 setup with 2 Raptors for my system, and a RAID 3 on the other card for storage. Even with an Athlon XP system, it made for a really fast system - not as fast as my Core 2 Duo setup that I now have, but it was good for what it was.

If it weren't for the PCI Bus part, I'd probably try to work one or two of those into my newer main system, b/c the RAID setup was very nice, and worked very well. It also performs great, as I already mentioned.

With your hard drives, you won't meet the limits anyway, so I'd say if you can spend say $20 or less, you can pick up a plain-old PCI to SATA card, and use that.

You could take a look at this one for $25 on NewEgg:

It gives you 4 ports, and supports any of the latest SATA drives, apparently. If you go hunting for adapters, just don't mess up and get a PCI-X or PCI Express adpater, since your motherboard wouldn't have either of those, unless I missed something.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
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I'm not familiar with RAID...SATA drives have a different connector than the IDE don't they? Wouldn't I still need a cable to connect the SATA to the mobo?
 
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RAID is not a necessary part, actually. What I was talking about is totally optional, and not necessary.

Yes, SATA ports are MUCH smaller than IDE.

If you prefer getting a strait SATA to IDE converter, you might could try this as well:

Someone mentioned that in a different website forum:

However, I still think that if you have a PCI slot available, a PCI SATA card would be best.

As far as RAID goes, there are different types of RAID. Basically, it's making the computer use your 2 or more hard drives as one drive. Of course, there's much more detail, but that's enough for starters. You could setup RAID 0 or RAID 1 for 2 hard drives. RAID 1 is for redundancy, RAID 0 for performance. But as I mentioned, you could stick to non-RAID for now. Also, not ALL PCI SATA cards support RAID anyhow, at least they didn't before, not 100% sure now - it'll be stated in the description.

If you want to find out more about RAID, there's lots of info on the web. For starters, you could look at:

OR


Or many other references. There's one that got referenced a lot in these forums in the past, but I didn't see it when searching Google for a moment. I'm sure it's there, I didn't look long at all.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
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OK Thanks for in info.

I did try one more time to install Win 7 on that drive. There was an error about a device driver missing, cd/dvd, something of the sort. It asked me to put in media i.e.,floppy,cd,memory stick, that has the driver and install. Anyway, I went digging around to find my driver disks and found an old Dell XP disk from another computer. I thought what the heck I'll try that one. It started to load and seemed to be going through. I thought hmmmm, I'll try the other XP disk again, the one that didn't work, again for the heck of it. Again I got "the file usbehci.sys file is corrupted" message. Interesting, I put the "new" xp disk back in and it started loading, it is now formatting the drive and I haven't gotten any "the file usbehci.sys file is corrupted" message. Maybe I had 2 bad XP disks, don't know but they are original Dell disks as is the 3rd one.

Wish I could load 7 but whatever, I don't know what DVD/CD driver would be missing nor where I would get it to install.

Will let you all know how the set up comes out with XP.
 
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well that would have been my next suggestion, to try another XP CD...

now, Windows 7 tends to LOOSE contact to certain DVD (CD) motherboard combos, usually SATA, workaround for that issue is to use a USB DVD drive and boot and install from it...

when doing so, make sure that in the BIOS setup, you ENABLE the USB EMULATION setting to ON (Integrated Devices sub-menu)...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"
 
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Well, if you want Win7 on there, there are a couple other options you could try:

1. With XP installed, run the Windows 7 install from within Windows, just tell it to do a full install. Perhaps that'll get around any related errors.

2. The other option would be to create an image file of your Windows 7 disk, then burn it to a new DVD-R disk, and see if it'll load correctly. I suppose it could be some small/minor variation in the disk - an ever so slight warpage, crack, scratch, whatever, maybe even too small to see. And for whatever reason, sometimes you can rip ISOs of such disks, and reburn better than you can install from.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me
 
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Went ahead with the xp install, now running the 7 with a clean install. Seems to be moving along just fine. :) I didn't want have to buy a new drive for this computer as my brother and fam (their computer)are in hard times, not desperate but certain they have more important things to put money into. Glad I didn't have to. Will let you all know the outcome of the install.
 
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Win 7 loaded and running.

Thanks for all the tips nice to know about the NUKE program and learned a lot about RAID as well.
Thanks again :)
 
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