To Whom It May Concern:

I can't boot up my PC after my cousin downloaded/installed a screensaver. On a normal boot it would stop at the "Starting Windows" screen (only fills up like 4 bars). Cannot boot in safe mode. It would execute the following and then stop:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\ntoskrnl.exe
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\hal.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\BOOTVID.dll
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT\System32\config\system

Tried booting from Win2K CD (as suggested from various people) but it would not work so I created boot disks from the CD on another Win2K machine. Again, did not work. Received the following error:

Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration...
Disk I/O error: Status = 00001002
NTDETECT failed

So, I looked up this error and turns out that my boot.ini file might be screwed up. I created a boot disk by copying the NTDETECT.com and NTLDR files from the Win2K CD to a formatted disk. To make the boot.ini file, I copied a "default" format from a website, which looks as follows:

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

When I used the boot disk, it would still leave me at the "Starting Windows" screen. And running in safe mode would still give me the same problem as before.

What's going on with my computer? It doesn't like the solutions that are suppose to fix it. Please, I would appreciate any feedback and help. Thank you.

kanin

Just a thought,
When the virus runs on Windows 2000 computers it replaces the Bootvid.dll file with its own version. The replaced Bootvid.dll is 7 KB in size.

Bootvid.dll is a native DLL that is loaded during Windows 2000 startup to display a graphical image. In this case, if Bootvid.dll is replaced with the infected version.

Also try and put "/basevideo" switch at the end of the boot.ini after fastdect this will boot the computer w/ standard VGA drivers, or "/noguiboot" will boot to the CMD w/o loading GUI.
Just another thought.

Okay, FINALLY, SOME progress...

I got my PC to boot with the 4 Win2K CDs (reformatted old ones and created new ones). Got to the Windows Setup screen. Chose r (Repair), then m (Manual Repair). Setup replaced files that were unlike the original and rebooted. Nothing changed. Still left me with 4 bars in the "Starting Windows" screen.

So, I ran Windows Setup again but chose NEW install, which searched for previous version of windows and then offered to repair. It deleted old files under \winnt\system32 and then copied over the original files from CD. Then rebooted. Good news, on the "Starting Windows" screen the bars moved to about 80% and then stopped. Bad news, still not booting. I tried booting in safe mode but did the same, executed about 17 .sys files (stopped at KSecDD.sys) and stopped.

So, I ran Windows Setup again and ran the Recovery Console. I ran "chkdsk c" and detected drive is okay. So, I ran "chkdsk c /p" and detected one or more errors on drive. So, I ran "chkdsk c /p /r" and it said process finished (I assumed it fixed the error it found). Then rebooted. But still, same result, bars at "Starting Windows" screen stopped at 80%.

I'll try your suggestion Toad, to replace the bootvid.dll file with another by going into Recovery Console again. Hopefully, things will get closer to working. Could this be the reason it would hang at 80%?

Thanks for all your help!

kanin

After all that, you tried to repair by reinstalling the sys files, you tried new install repair, you tried the ReCo console(have you tried FIXBOOT ans/or FIXMBR), I would start thinking of a fresh install.
BTW how is the DRIVE?
Here is the ReCo console commands & switches.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q229/7/16.ASP&NoWebContent=1

Toad, no I haven't tried FIXBOOT or FIXMBR. I'll try that. Do I need to be in a certain directory when I do that or can I just run those at its default directory (C:\WINNT\)? Thanks for your help!

kanin

No, you boot off the CD(if you don't have the Recorvery Console installed), pick repair & and run the ReCo console. From there you run the commands.
I have yet too have one not repaired(in XP Pro anyway) unless the drive is bad OR it's something other than sys files, ie; virus, drivers, 3rd party app's.