windows not starting

[lamah]

need expert help

not sure this is relevant, but i was messing with my dual screen setup this morning, messing the monitor hookup through a KVM switch

but somehow when i asked the computer to reboot, i get the blue screen of death. i can make it past the screen says your last boot was incomplete, and asks if i want to do safe mode, safe mode with network, or safemode with command prompt, or last safe configuration, or normal boot

if i select any of them, windows will load files and after the giveio.sys, i don't see anything else loaded (except sometimes it'll make it to SPTD.sys), then the blue screen of death comes and the machine automatically reboots and repeats the cycle

what i want to do is somehow do a system restore, but from the command prompt, but given i can't make it even to the command prompt, i don't know what to do

anyone got a solution?

[JustMeBF2]

XP or ?

With XP and a disc you could do a repair install since you cant get to the command prompt.

If you have any important info to backup/save, boot to a live linux cd (i prefer ubuntu 8.10) or Windows ultimate boot disc using a external HD or USB stick to transfer data to.

[lamah]

it's windows xp pro

but it's the first release

if i do a repair install on top of that, will i lose something? all releases prior to sp2 do not allow hard drive size of greater that 137gig, my hard drive is 640gigs divided into 2 partitions. the current install on it is patched to sp3

if i were to repair install, will i be able to system restore to yesterday after this?

how bout a bootable windows disk that allows you to select system restore? such thing exist? i'm dowloading a ubcd thing, i'm hoping that has something like that

[JustMeBF2]

Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
That is why I backup important info first.
I have and use a SP2 disc so have never tried a restore install using an SP1 disc.

I have never tried a "restore to an earlier date" via UBD, I have never been a big fan of using restore, no specific reason.

[lamah]

well, i got my system running again after using winternals ERD Commander, basically it's system restore running off a boot cd, and restored to november (i can't believe i hadn't made any restore points since). such a useful utility you'd think microsoft had thought of it first..... anyway, turns out they bought the company winternals in 2007 and has incorporated the system restore boot cd into vista and win7

thanks for your input

[JustMeBF2]

I have used that in W7 and wasn't aware of it for xp. I will have to look into that.

[Gruthar]

For future reference, if you hit F8 before Windows loads, you can usually disable the automatic restarting on BSoD (IIRC it may be missing on XP installs that have no SP.) That'll give you enough time to get the STOP code. In some cases, all you need to do to fix it is run chkdsk C: /f.

Also, take the time to make a slipstreamed (or at least updated) XP Pro disk now that you have your machine running!

[lamah]

i tried running chkdsk c: /f after going into repair console with the cd, but it said something about disk having too many unreadable errors, which in hindsight is BS

been wanting to do make an updated cd, so guess you're right, now is the time :D

[Shadowryche]

i tried running chkdsk c: /f after going into repair console with the cd, but it said something about disk having too many unreadable errors, which in hindsight is BS

been wanting to do make an updated cd, so guess you're right, now is the time :D

You didn't use a FAT32 file system did you? Not the most reliable, and chkdsk really sucks scanning it.

[lamah]

nope, used ntfs

[lamah]

well i found out what was causing the BSOD in the first place, as i installed it again last nite and crashed my system. it was motorola's phone tools..... :(

this time around on trying to recover, ERD Commander totally wiped out my windows boot sector when i selected "purge last known ERD change"

dammit should've upgraded to win7 when i had the chance