Okay, I think I may be in bad shape here.

I was happily running in XP, Yahoo IM was acting up. So, as usual, I rebooted. It shut down, it went through POST, went to black screen....and then nothing. Sat there blank, no disk activity. Zilch. I have no idea where to go from here. No "Invalid System Disk" or anything.

Here's what I do know. It's not the IDE bus as I am currently posting from my Linux partition that's sitting on the a disk on the same IDE bus as the XP drive. This looked very similar to when I stomped my MBR while installing Linux, so I booted with the XP setup disk and ran the FIXMBR routine. It happily recognized my XP installation, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware problem, but FIXMBR didn't work. I don't know where to go from here :(

And yes, I'm stupid enough to not have an emergency boot disk :rolleyes:

You know, I can't really get "into" anything Windoze.

Now, Mac, I can get into. I'm even getting ready to make the big upgrade... When they put G5's into iMac's we're going to get one and that will be so sweet. That I can get into. My friend just converted to an iMac and it's a nice machine.

Oh, that's not what you meant, is it?

NM,
Adrienne

:|

Originally posted by adriennek
Oh, that's not what you meant, is it?



Probably not. He's having an issues with Windows - it's the most popular operating system in use today. I wonder how it got that way??????:p

Sorry, GD. This is beyond either one of our skill levels to provide any assistance.

Before anyone with anything VALUABLE has anything to add responds :p, let me run this by those who do know what they're talking about.

My thought is that it's a virus. Had a bunch of people over the other day, they were downloading some music and videos and such. When I looked at the computer afterwards, I saw that the control panel window of my virus check was open. But there were no warnings or anything to indicate a virus, so I kind of brushed it aside. Looks like that may have been a mistake. Anyone know any virus going around that affect the MBR and how to remove it?

Can't boot the disk. Don't have an emergency boot disk. But I do have a second hard drive. Using the XP setup disk, I've confirmed that the file system is still in tact. So, if I install XP on the second hard drive (wiping out the Linux install, but I don't have anything on it anyway, it's just to mess with), I should be able to access the other drive. If so, then I can scan for a virus and/or fix whatever needs to be fixed. Then, worst case scenario, I can pull important data off the drive and start from scratch (eeew, hateful).

I'm just looking for validation that 1) there's no other option, and 2) that my solution makes sense. And, since I've been, in the past, surprised at how annoying it is sometimes to get Windows to recognize other hard drives, is tehre anything I need to do to make the plan work. If I remember correctly, I should be able to just pop the setup disk in, tell it to install on the second drive, and that should do it, yes? I don't have to worry about it wiping out the existing install, or where on the IDE bus the drive is sitting or anything, right?

Man I hate this crap sometimes.

Couple of things to check:
Can you get to the boot menu? Hit F8 as soon as the BIOS startup clears. If you can, try Safe or Logged.
Windows 2000 had a Diagnostic Boot mode available from the installation CD. I don't know if XP does, but I would expect it. Try booting from the XP CD and look for a Diagnostic Boot. This would get you to a command prompt that includes some useful diagnostic tools.

Your second disk solution should work, but it's a last resort.

Originally posted by Andrew
Couple of things to check:
Can you get to the boot menu? Hit F8 as soon as the BIOS startup clears. If you can, try Safe or Logged.
Windows 2000 had a Diagnostic Boot mode available from the installation CD. I don't know if XP does, but I would expect it. Try booting from the XP CD and look for a Diagnostic Boot. This would get you to a command prompt that includes some useful diagnostic tools.

Your second disk solution should work, but it's a last resort. Doesn't get far enough to boot to safe mode. XP's got "Repair Console" mode from the setup disk. I don't know if it's the same as diagnostic. That's where I went to attempt to repair the MBR. Assuming it is the equivalent of diagnostic mode, what diagnostic commands might you suggest.

First of all this is Leaps geeky husband not Leap so any comments from here forth are solely mine:

OK well it does sound a bit virus like. Have you tried doing the f8 option on boot to get into the windows sub booting routine or can you even get that far. You need to do this right after the mb has done all of its booting.

If you can’t get that far and have to reformat I suggest disconnecting the disk with your info on it and have only your lynx disk attached. Just to be on the safe side ;) . Then after you have installed winxp, your antivirus and broadband stuff shut down and hook your previous windows drive up as the slave. Winxp will have no problem detecting the drive; just make sure the jumpers are set correctly on both drives. Once you do this you will be able to do as you said; scan the drive for virus and fix, if possible, or transfer all of your info onto the newly formatted drive. The process sucks but you can still save all of your data. I have had to do this before and the worst part is reinstalling all the apps.

Hope this helps, sorry I don’t have any other suggestions yet, I’ll mull it over and think if there is another way out, but it doesn’t sound like it ):

Yeah, thanks for the tips. That's what I figured I'd do. I was initially hoping not to open the box (just because I hate manual labor :p ), but you're right that that's the safest way to go. And yes, it's the reinstallation of all the apps (not all of which I necessarily have install disks for........) that I don't look forward to. And the months long process of fine tuning all the system settings to be what we're used to. I HATE that. Oh well. New rule, if there's a party, I don't let my computer out of my sight without a password on it :rolleyes:

Disaster seemingly avoided. Before wiping out the second disk, I tried one more thing. Beyond the command line repair console accessable from the setup disk, there is also an automatic full repair of the XP install. I tried that, correctly assuming that it would only touch system files and leave my data and applications in tact. So I'm back up and running. The only difficulty is that it kind of tweaked out the user setup. With some copying and pasting I've restored most of the environment back to what it was, but there are one or two things here and there that I'm still trying to figure out.

Meanwhile I'm running a virus scan. It already found one, but it was some sort of spyware thing, so I don't think it was the culprit. Who knows. I'm just happy I've restored some semblance of order.

You've already done what I was going to suggest (doing a "repair" installation). At this point, running a virus scan is smart, but my guess is that the problem you described probably wasn't a virus. What you are describing strikes me as being more likely a case of some sort of a system file corruption, most likely caused by the forced reboot during an apparent system crash. In all likelihood, the system was still doing something in the background during that crash and the sudden reboot caused a corruption in the OS. It could also have been a driver corruption, although that would usually allow you to still get in via safe mode.

Hopefully, the repair installation will allow your system to keep running without problems. In case you do see it starting to act flaky (sudden crashes or lockups, certain programs not working properly, etc.), you should pobably start backing up key data and gathering software installation packages in case you still end up needing to do a re-format and fresh install. I actually had a recent occasion where I was able to do a repair install and get the system back up and running, but a file system corruption of some sort caused periodic lock ups of XP's Windows Explorer. I did finally end up doing a re-format and re-install to clear up the problem.

-Jeff

I was going to suggest a repair install, too
:fez:


You may want to check to make sure that your Firewall is up and running. Someone may have gotten in a messed with some boot files. :| :geek:

Originally posted by DisneyFan25863
I was going to suggest a repair install, too
:fez:


You may want to check to make sure that your Firewall is up and running. Someone may have gotten in a messed with some boot files. :| :geek: Firewall is there, and realtively tight.

I still think it was a virus. Virus check didn't turn anything up, but that may be because the repair wiped out any infected system files. I still suspect virus because in my research on how to get out of this mess, I saw a lot of documentation saying, "If it gets past post, but won't load Windows and 'hangs,' your MBR probably corrupt. If you use FIXMBR in the repair console and that doesn't work, it's probably a virus." I saw that explanation a number of times, and that's exactly what happened.

I have had no system crashes or abrubt shutdowns in weeks. The system was up and running in fine condition. I performed a clean reboot, it successfully logged off and shutdown, it came up, went through POST, and hung. So there was nothing unusual in the whole process other than the mystery of why the frontend of my antivirus was open.

Now, who knows how to get the start menu to stop logging recent documents when it's in the classic format. The option is nowhere to be seen! I can do it when it's in the new, XP style Start Menu, but not classic. I seem to remember having the same connundrum when I first installed XP and I also seem to remember it mysteriously stopping without me quite knowing how.

Originally posted by Ghoulish Delight
Now, who knows how to get the start menu to stop logging recent documents when it's in the classic format. The option is nowhere to be seen! I can do it when it's in the new, XP style Start Menu, but not classic. I seem to remember having the same connundrum when I first installed XP and I also seem to remember it mysteriously stopping without me quite knowing how.

Install Microsoft TweakUI for XP (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp). It will let you adjust that setting and several others.

For the problem of random guests monkeying with your computer, I suggest creating a separate user account with only user-level (not administrator-level) privileges. They'll be able to browse and watch movies and listen to music or whatever, but should be unable to affect the whole system. If they screw up the user account, you can just delete it and create a new one.

Hell, I can't get into any version of Windoze since NT 4.0.

Seriously, though, maybe you should consider this a reason to switch to something else. Like Mac or Linux. Or at least an older version of Windoze.