XP Pro won't complete boot 1

[flapeyre]

Hi, all,

This morning, my PC (Dell Dimension 4550 with XP Pro and 768 MB RAM) became non-responsive, so I shut it down and tried to reboot. And now, it will not complete the boot. I am able to log on (it accepts my password), but then I get

Application error xxxxxxxxxx on winlogon.exe - the memory could not be "written".

(I'm at work now, so I'm going from memory here).

I have SP2 on XP Pro and all of the updates. My AV and anti-spyware is ZoneAlarm (just put on the latest one last week). The PC normally stays up all the time.

Anything I can do to isolate this, short of a repair install of XP?

Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas.

 

[flapeyre]

Okay, I have tried a repair install of XP with no luck - I get the same error on boot:

winlogon.exe - Application Error

The instruction at "0x77ed6015" referenced memory at "0xffffffff". The memory cannot be "read".
Click on OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the program

HELP!!

Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas.

 

[flapeyre]

I ended up being unable to to reinstall Windows on that drive, so I ended up getting a new drive, installed it, made the old one a slave, and was able to reinstall XP (via the OEM XP CD that came with the PC). Still some work to do, restoring applications and the like, but, fortunately, the old drive is readable as a slave, plus I had everything backed up to an external drive.

The new drive is a big leap, space-wise, from the old one (300 GB vs. 80 GB). The new drive (Maxtor) came with a utility that will let me partition the whole drive instead of seeing just the first 137 GB.

One question: The drive letter for the new drive is G:\ (that's where it boots from; the old (slave) is still the C:\ drive). How do I switch those drive letters around? I want to do that before I get this PC back on the home network, so my shares can be the same as what they used to be?

TIA.

Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas.

 

[G0AOZ]

You can't easily, I'm afraid... It would involve hundreds of changes to all the path statements which were set when you did the install. The only practical solution is to clean off the disk and start a fresh install, and make sure the 80Gb drive is disconnected whilst you're running setup.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[flapeyre]

Thanks, Roger. I geuss I'll just live with it for now. As long as it works, I suppose it doesn't matter what the drive letter is.

Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas.