posted
a friend asked me to check out his computer and I can't really figure out what's going on.
The computer won't boot. You turn it on and it begins the start up process, it goes through that black loading screen with the xp logo, and then right after that brings up a blue screen(similar to the how the screen looks when you install windows) and says the following:
quote:Check file system on C the type of file system is ntfs cannot open volume for direct access windows has finished checking the disc
after this it goes to a fatal error blue screen and restarts the computer. it does this on an infinite loop.
I can't get this thing to boot from any disc, i can't get it into safe mode or last known good configuration. I have no idea how he even did this to his pc.
the error is "c000021a", and then it says "the windows subsystem system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xC0000005.
I looked up these error codes but didn't really get much useful information on how to proceed.
quote:Originally posted by BlueWizard: Try starting in Safe Mode. Usually this is done by holding down the F5 key during start up.
In Safe Mode, try to shut off any unnecessary programs that are starting.
quote:I can't get this thing to boot from any disc, i can't get it into safe mode or last known good configuration. I have no idea how he even did this to his pc.
I can't really help you, but you may want to find a good tech troubleshooting forum. There's some good ones out there with multiple people that do this kind of thing for a living that could probably help you out.
Posts: 290 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I can never figure anything useful out from those error codes anyway. It sounds like there could be a number of problems, from physical problems with the drive, to corrupted sectors.. If you have some tools At that point I usually have to give up on being able to boot the drive, install windows onto another drive and then try to recover the data on the first. If you don't have a spare drive, you could take his and back up the data from it onto your computer, then let him reinstall windows on it.
The last time I screwed up my system drive I rewrote the boot sectors while trying to repair a smaller problem and then had to give up on being able to boot the drive before a complete reformat.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
he doesn't care about any of the data on his computer and is fine with re-installing windows, in fact he was trying to do that before he gave it to me, but it wouldn't recognize any discs in either of the drives and just kept on looping. If it's going to take an exorbitant amount of work, I told him it might be easier to just buy a cheap hard drive, load windows onto it, and start from scratch.
but i guess i can just hook it up to my pc and try to install windows on it that way.
I used to have an old spare 30gb hard drive around, but misplaced it in my last move. I'll see if i can dig it up.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I would suggest a repair install, but if I'm understanding you correctly, it won't boot from any disc. If that's really the case, then you have a hardware problem before it even gets to the hard drive.
Also, generally it's not possible to install Windows on one computer and then move the hard drive to another and have it boot properly. There may be a way around this, but I'm not aware of one.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Repair install might work. But try this first. You probably need to set up the computer to boot from the CD Rom drive first. Most computers have it set to boot from the CD drive *after* the hard drive for some odd reason. If it's a Dell, usually hitting F12 at the DELL logo screen will bring up a boot menu that will let you choose what to boot from.
Once you've got that done, boot from the Windows XP CD and let it go until it gives you a few options. I think it says press enter to continue, press R to go to the recovery console and something else to quit.
Press R, and then tell it to boot from the C drive (I'm having to go on memory for this, so you may have to fiddle with it to actually get into the recovery console).
Once you're in the recovery console, type CHKDSK /R (This can take a while) . This will scan the hard drive for bad sectors and then fix any file problems it sees.
Once that's done, try rebooting it and see if it loads into windows. If not, go back into the recovery console and type FIXMBR, let it do its thing and then reboot. If it still doesn't boot into windows, you're basically hosed and will have to try reinstalling windows. If it still don't boot, get a new hard drive.
quote:Originally posted by BlueWizard: Try starting in Safe Mode. Usually this is done by holding down the F5 key during start up.
In Safe Mode, try to shut off any unnecessary programs that are starting.
quote:I can't get this thing to boot from any disc, i can't get it into safe mode or last known good configuration. I have no idea how he even did this to his pc.
I can't really help you, but you may want to find a good tech troubleshooting forum. There's some good ones out there with multiple people that do this kind of thing for a living that could probably help you out.
There are a lot of people on this forum as well who do this kind of thing for a living and are more than happy to help out. I for one enjoy answering technical questions on here. It helps me stay sharp and it's a lot less annoying that hovering around a forum with 500 geeks arguing over which processor is better for what. With 5 Apple guys trying to preach the good word of the fruit god.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:You probably need to set up the computer to boot from the CD Rom drive first.
man...if it were that easy. It wouldn't boot from any disc, all it would do was stay in that infinite loop.
I ended up finding my extra drive, which already had windows installed on it. I put it in his pc and made it the primary drive. started up the pc, and it started up fine. once i was in, i reformatted the other drive. trying to load windows back onto it turned out to be a real pain though. No matter what configuration i had the drives set to, when the screen came up asking me where i wanted to do the install, it wasn't showing the original drive(but at least i was now actually able to boot from a cd). I ended up taking out my drive, setting his drive back to the primary drive, and when I restarted, it automatically booted up from the windows cd now recognizing his drive again.
all is now fixed. thanks for the suggestions folks.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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