Help Needed: Blue Screen of Death (Vanity)

1 Oct 2002 | tictoc

[tictoc]

Can a Freeper techie help me out?

My main work PC is on the blink, crashed one day while surfing the net.

I've tried to completely reinstall Windows 2000 in a freshly reformatted system partition. Installation seemed to go well while the screen was blue with white lettering (formating system partition, installing Windows 2000 files from the CD-ROM). Then it changes to a turquoise background. A few times I made it almost all the way through the hardware recognition procedure which follows: but never until completion.

Every time it ends in a Blue Screen of Death but each time with a different error message:

"IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

"UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP"

"NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM"

"DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

"KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED"

"A device driver has damaged the system memory administration pool"

... and sometimes memory addresses (different each time) and a file name (sometimes ntkrnl or atapi.sys) are indicated.

I've tried everything I know: created four HD floppy disks using MAKEBOOT to boot from drive A:, used the various repair and checking options during initial installation (they work fine), started Windows 2000 in Secure Mode, VGA mode, Debug Mode etc.

It always ends more or less at the same point.

Could this be a faulty RAM chip that only makes itself noticed when "higher memory areas" are accessed? However, during bootup sequence the computer tests the RAM (128 MB) and says "OK".

I've gone into BIOS and disabled all caching and shadowing options, and changed system timings to the slowest values. Nothing seems to help.

Any ideas?

[al_c]

I was? How about #24? #48? #54? ;)

Point taken. But hardly a Mac v. Windows v. Linux war happening here. 3 posts out of 70+ isn't much of a battle. ;o)

[tictoc]

No success yet but to keep me entertained the Blue Screen of Death treated me to a new error message:

PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGEABLE AREA

Is a page someone like a bellhop :-)

[general_re]

But hardly a Mac v. Windows v. Linux war happening here. 3 posts out of 70+ isn't much of a battle. ;o)

True - this thread isn't all that conducive to advocacy. But even so, a few can't resist the opportunity ;)

[general_re]

Is a page someone like a bellhop :-)

Something like that ;)

I'm leaning strongly towards the "you've got a bad stick of memory" explanation...

[tictoc]

Okay, update:

I managed to get a DOS prompt via the Recovery Console that you referenced in an earlier post.

(1) chkdsk c: /p /r (the system partition):
Errors found and corrected.

(2) chkdsk e: /p /r (the slave hard disk):
No errors.

(3) chkdsk d: /p /r (the second [data] partition on the first hard disk):
Your disk drive appears to have unrecoverable errors.

(4) chkdsk c: /p /r (rechecking the system partition):

Your disk drive appears to have unrecoverable errors.

(5) fixmbr OK

(6) fixboot c: OK

(7) Windows 2000 installs! ... but is still unstable.

So, I believe I have located the problem to be a faulty hard disk.

Now I'll have to do one of two things: (a) get this computer to recognize it is on a network so that I can move important data files to the #2 work machine, or (b) find my CD ROM with the CD burner software so that I can move the data files to a CD-R.

Following that, I guess I should check out the link to the Maxtor web site posted earlier by another Freeper, download the low-level format utility for my hard disk, and make a fresh start on virgin metal.

GR and everybody thanks for sticking with me so far and my apologies for boring most of you to tears!!

[general_re]

Hey, good show. You're on the way, now. ;)

Now I'll have to do one of two things: (a) get this computer to recognize it is on a network so that I can move important data files to the #2 work machine, or (b) find my CD ROM with the CD burner software so that I can move the data files to a CD-R.

Why mess around with any of that? It's bound to be a pain in the butt if the Windows install is really unstable, and there's an easier way if none of the files on your disk are encrypted, and you have access to another Win2k machine (XP would probably also work if it's an NTFS drive - if it's FAT32, 95, 98, or ME should also work).

Just yank the data drive from the bad computer, hook up the IDE cable and power cable to the second machine, make sure it's properly configured as a master or slave as appropriate, and boot up the second machine - it should recognize and automatically mount the new (bad) disk. Then just use that machine to copy your files from the bad drive to anywhere you like.

Easy as pie, and as an added bonus, you can reformat and repartition it while it's hooked up to the second machine, and then put it back in the first machine to try reinstalling Windows... ;)

[Ku Commando]

Somebody say "Blue Screen o' Death" ???

[RightWhale]

What you might do is buy a brand-new hard drive and plug it into the box in place of the old one, then install the new OS on that. It's not expensive as it used to be, and the problem will either go away or will be found to be on the motherboard. If you do this, you can get your old machine back immediately some day if you ever want to simply by plugging the old hard drive back in and disconnecting the new one.

[dennisw]

btttt

[dennisw]

Easy as pie, and as an added bonus, you can reformat and repartition it while it's hooked up to the second machine, and then put it back in the first machine to try reinstalling Windows... ;)
________________

Yeah but avoid mistakes one should do this with just one disk in the machine. No master/slave stuff. So easy to kill stuff on the good disk that you want to keep. Partition Magic can help. http://fosisoft.home.ro/

[general_re]

It is wise to avoid mistakes - PM is an excellent suggestion, as it's reliable and relatively foolproof for such a powerful tool. PM lets you create a boot disk as I recall, that you can use to boot into a machine that is otherwise unbootable, and perform your repartitioning that way...

[stylin_geek]

This site contains excellent instructions on bringing your harddrive back to scratch. Unfortunately, the /mbr does not always work.

As for your system not being able to boot to the CDROM, you need to set the boot device sequence in the BIOS. Good luck, I do not envy you at all.