Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
Hi. Two weeks ago I installed win2k on my computer. Everything was working fine until a few days ago...suddenly NOTHING works! The problem occurs during boot: I get as far as the win2k loading screen, then there's a quick flash of the blue screen and the machine restarts. I have tried every possible startup (Safemode, safemode with network, etc) but I can never get into the system. Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem might be? I've read through the other problems regarding win2k, but at least in those cases people have been able to enter using safe mode. Help would be greatly apprechiated! My computer: Athlon 900, 128 RAM, GeForce 32MB GTS, 32x Creative CD-R/W, Aopen moterboard.
Complicated... especially if you don't mention the blue screen error code/module. Probably a non-win2000 compatible driver. Can you not even boot into Last Known Good Configuration?
Plus: you need the VIA updated motherboard drivers www.viatech.co.tw
0 
The thing is that I can't tell you what the blue screen message is because it's only visible for about half a second before the computer restarts.- I have also tried the LKGC but unfortunately that did not do the trick. I am wondering if his might be a harddrive error, though win2k actually performs a check on drive c with no errors found, just before the bluescreen turns up. The weirdest part has to be the fact that everything was working up until two days ago...and I hadn't installed anything prior to this for the last two weeks. I would love to update every driver on the machine, but how am I to do this when I can't get in?
0
Well, this is what I plan to do when I get home from work...if anyone knows of anything better to do, please say. Since I have kinda come to the conclusion that there most be something wrong with my harddrive (I've heard that hd's have a way of suddenly breaking down without any reason...especially IBM's). Based on this I am planning to remove the hd and move it into another computer and run fdisk on it. If an error is found, I then will know that the hd was causing the problems. If there seems to be nothing wrong with it...well, at least I know that the hd was not the problem.
0
By the way...as I see it, a good start in solving this problem would be to find out what information the blue screen is giving. So, does anyone know how I can gather this information when the machine reboots half a second after the sceen has been displayed? (The Pause/Break button did not work. The hard-way around the problem as I see it is to use a digital camera and take a picture, but there must be an easier way...disabling restart or something?)
0
By the way...as I see it, a good start in solving this problem would be to find out what information the blue screen is giving. So, does anyone know how I can gather this information when the machine reboots half a second after the screen has been displayed? (The Pause/Break button did not work. The hard-way around the problem as I see it is to use a digital camera and take a picture, but there must be an easier way...disabling restart or something?)
0
Hopefully you have a recent backup of everything. I just suffered a crash on my laptop, fortunately I didn't lose anything important b/c most of the data files were copies from my desktop. If you do have a recent backup, your best bet might be to use a program like EZ-Drive by Western Digital to reformat your hard drive, then reinstall Windows and then all your software. I know that's probably not what you want to hear, but that's reality in the Windows world.
0
Luckily I reformated my harddrive only three weeks ago, so a new formating does not scare me too much. However, the part that freaks me out is the fact that one of my friends told me that whenever you get a blue screen, then you've got some hardware malfunction. Is this true, or can a driver cause a blue screen? Anyways, home from work I inserted my bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com to check my hd: Everything seemed to work like a charm, so I am back to scratch. I guess I'll have to follow your advice now Terry. I have made a recent backup, but this still means that I will loose quite a lot of important e-mail, so I plan to move c: hd into my other computer and copy important files, then format it on the same computer and move it back into my main pc and install everything again...however, this time I will create a dual OS system running win98 and win2000. Hopefully this will do the trick.
0
If you removed your hardisk and put it another computer and ran chkdisk, did it boot on the other machine? Have you been inside the computer and is everything exactly the way it should be,secured and properly in its slots, all cables secured, cpu fan running, if so try removing one board at a time and see if you can boot up each time. If this fails its possible you could have a bad motherboard, bad memory, bad harddrive, bad keyboard, bad CPU, however I would rule most of these out since you can boot past your bios. I agree it would be helpful if you could read the error message. If you can boot up from the bootdisks why not just try and repair the system or just reinstall the OS and save your settings. Harware problems can be a pain, but they just take a little (a lot) time to sort through.
0
In reply to Coach:
Moving the hd to the other machine did not cause it to boot on that hd since I already had a system (win98) running on it and I set the jumper to Slave Mode. I have gone through all the slots and cables, but this could not have been the problem anyway due to the fact that this error occured without notice. I had not fiddled inside the computer for months, nor had I installed any new programs prior to the error. My guess is that there has to be a hardware malfunction involved here, but finding it will be the tricky part. I have removed all the boards/cards, except the video card (The GeForce card) which I can't remove due to the fact that my motherboard does not have an onboard video card. I tried to repair the system yesterday without any luck. The next step will ofcourse be to format the hd, but before this I am going to have one final go at the blue screen. Unfortunately I don't have a digital camera, however I do have a camcorder so basically I am going to video the blue screen and see if I am able to read the text. ---Three days into the problem and it still hasn't been solved....well, one thing is for sure: I don't have a future in computer support!
0
Just a suggestion, disconnect the hardrive from the 98 machine, install the suspect hardrive set to master and see if it boots or remove the 98 hardrive and install it in the suspect machine and see if it boots, if it boots you can safely say its the drive, if you install the 98 hardrive and it boots, I would say that the hardrive is suspect (win 2000) or the graphic card is suspect (driver problem maybe). Again I must mention that if you can boot up using the StartUp disks why not just reinstall, at this point you have nothing to lose. And yes, you do seem to have a future in computer support. After this you will know more than you ever needed to know about repairing and troubleshooting your computer until you have to solve a network problem. Also good luck on the filming.
0
If you swap the drive to another machine that is not the same chip set it will mess up your win settings on the drive.
I had the same problem after up dating the media player to version 7.*. The fix was simple. I changed my bios plug and play settings to: NO PLUG & PLAY OS and booted the machine. It worked. AT the same time I am having a hard drive problem. It slowed down after updating to the driver with a buffer.
Hope this helps!!!
0
Finally someone who's had a similar problem! Thanks joe, I'll try it out as soon as I get back from work...I've only got one question for you: How on earth did you figure out that changing your bios setting as above, would do the trick???
0
I had the same problem when I was stupid enough to install Compaq Superstupid Keyboard.. (Easy Access Button, thats what its called)... Exactly the same thing happened.. What I found out was that Easy Access Button wasn´t compatible with Windows 2000.. Have you got something like this?
0
I've got a Compaq laptop, 1800 series model number 18xl280 (on the HCL) and it has easy access buttons. But since I reformatted the HD, the compaq software that uses them is no longer present. There is no bios setting on this computer to disable the buttons, since they are not BIOS compatible, and there is no setting for "PNP BIOS". I have another system that does have that setting but unfortunately this one doesn't. I'm still trying to install Windows 2000 Pro. Problem is, I've been having random lockups and 0x7F errors which prevents the installation process from ever finishing. I need some help with this one.
0
to find out what the error is...try this..
when you first boot up, hit f8, then select the /bootlogged option and go with it. after the s--- hits the fan again, hit f8 again and select command prompt only. open the bootlog.txt file and read it. write down the errors and see what s happening.email me if this works for you.
later.
0  |
 Trident sound card under ...
|
Win2000 Screensaver
|
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
