I am going nuts...with XP

[stayouttadabunker]

okay Poppo,
I got into the BIOs and set the 1st Boot Device as the IDE-0 .
This will be trying to boot from the hard drive...
Powered up, pressed F8 to get into "Safe Mode".

See pic of BIOS setting in the Boot Sequence & video clip below>>>

[stayouttadabunker]

Give it a minute--still uploading to youtube


Okay>>>


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/E60qR24NLMk&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/E60qR24NLMk&rel=0</a>

[poppo]

Pesss and hold F8 after the BIOS screen and BEFORE the Windows logo pops up. If the logo pops up, you waited too long. You should get a menu for safe mode.

[stayouttadabunker]

okay...I did...
Two pics below..the options screen after pressing [F8]
and the screen after I chose LKGoodConfig...>>>

[poppo]

'Start normally' probably won't work. Try the very top one.

[stayouttadabunker]

Last Known Good Config screen...
I hit enter and still get into the XP logo screen and it reboots over and over...

[poppo]

In case you missed my last post. Try the first option 'Safe mode'. The 'last know good' option was just a shot in the dark. I've never had it actually work.  Safe mode may take a while to boot.

[stayouttadabunker]

I tried every one of those options...still reboots over and over.


I think I'm going to pull out this hard drive and save it aside and see if I can get all the NLG slot machine data out of it.
You would NOT believe how much slot docs are on it...
I HAVE to try and save it...screw this motherboard...

In case you missed my last post. Try the first option 'Safe mode'. The 'last know good' option was just a shot in the dark. I've never had it actually work.  Safe mode may take a while to boot.

Okay, I'm trying "Safe Mode" again for like the 50th time...lol

Here's a video clip of the Safe Mode attempt...>>>

need a few minutes to upload to youtube

BTW It won't be safe from my 8 Lb. sledgehammer out in the garage...

[stayouttadabunker]

Safe Mode attempt>>>


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/sihw87HSq_Y&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/sihw87HSq_Y&rel=0</a>

[poppo]

Well, it was worth a try. Safe mode boots with a mimumum number of drivers. It looks like it may be getting hung up on your video driver (or it may be on the next one that has not displayed yet).

You could boot to 'command prompt', but that starts getting cryptic and you need to know what file to replace.

So I think we are back to just putting the drive in a USB enclosure and getting your data off of it on another machine.

Or if you have a XP install CD, you can try doing  a 'repair' by booting off of the CD.

[stayouttadabunker]

It looks like it may be getting hung up on your video driver (or it may be on the next one that has not displayed yet).

I totally agree with you as the post stops scrolling down beyond the line at the "AGP" line -
which I'm sure is the driver for the onboard video chip or next driver like you said...

Or if you have a XP install CD, you can try doing  a 'repair' by booting off of the CD.

But with a different hard drive plugged in the the motherboard right?
To save the important hard drive on the side for now?

I will install the SATA hard drive I've never used and install with XP.
I don't have any other IDE hard drives on hand...

[poppo]

Or if you have a XP install CD, you can try doing  a 'repair' by booting off of the CD.

But with a different hard drive plugged in the the motherboard right?
To save the important hard drive on the side for now?

No, with this one. If you just do a 'repair', it will only replace all of the windows files. It won't mess with your data.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

[stayouttadabunker]

Or if you have a XP install CD, you can try doing  a 'repair' by booting off of the CD.

But with a different hard drive plugged in the the motherboard right?
To save the important hard drive on the side for now?

No, with this one. If you just do a 'repair', it will only replace all of the windows files. It won't mess with your data.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

okay...thanks for the link Poppo!! 
I gotta go look for my known good copy of XP...
I will report back in a bit. 

[staz]

why cant you just do a factory reinstall by hitting f11? it might work.... only down side is you loose all your personal data on there......that happened to me a while back xp kept rebooting i had to change my hard drive.......

[poppo]

why cant you just do a factory reinstall by hitting f11? it might work.... only down side is you loose all your personal data on there......that happened to me a while back xp kept rebooting i had to change my hard drive.......

What sort of 'factory install'? Some computers that have that option (XP install on a hidden partition) will wipe out everything and it will be like when you first bought it. Fine if you want to start from scratch, not good if you have data you need (as in this case).

[stayouttadabunker]

lol  staz - you would would NOT want to lose the stuff on THIS hard drive...believe me.  

I know how to install XP just fine, but I've never done the Recovery Console...
I know it's obvious I should hiy the "R" key....
Look at the new screen I got!
Here we go...>>>

[poppo]

That looks right.

[staz]

that should work.......... why didnt you ever back up everything on cd's?

[StatFreak]

Going all the way back to my last post, I never said that the master/slave configuration had anything to do with the problem or that it needed changing. I was suggesting a way to put another bootable drive into the computer as one option of getting an operating system loaded so that the suspect drive could be assessed and tested.

<EDIT> I deleted the rest of my post after watching the last video. If it consistently stops at exactly the same driver each time then a repair might fix the problem.

[poppo]

that should work.......... why didnt you ever back up everything on cd's?

Slightly off topic, but I am still using my 8 year old Toshiba Tecra M1 laptop. What I like about this laptop is that the DVD is removable and you can either put in a an extra battery OR a second hard drive. With the second hard drive it makes it super easy to use Ghost (from a boot floppy) to make an exact close of the drive. I have 2 'backup' drives that I alternate doing clones to. I do this once a week. Daily, I just do a simple file copy of stuff that changes on on daily basis to my main server. So in the case of a hard drive failure, (I have had a few), I just pop in the most recent clone and I'm already 99% of the way back to normal. then I copy back my daily files and all I may have lost is what I did between the daily backup and the crash. The whole 'restore' process takes about 5 minutes.

 
I really want a new laptop, but I hat to give up this functionality. Plus I absolutely HATE Widows 7. I have it on my server since that is what it came with, and I want to  every time I need to do anything. What used to be consistent since win 98 is now buried in some 'wizard' or elsewhere hidden.

[poppo]

I highly doubt that repairing windows is going to fix your problem, and I still think that the best solution is to access the drive from a fully booted computer ......

I agree that that is probaby the easiest thing. However I have also had a single corupt file cause the reboot thing. And his safe mode boot is showing it rebooting up on the same driver each time.

I have so many programs installed and custimizations that I personally would always try to do a repair first. Starting from scratch really sucks.

[StatFreak]

I highly doubt that repairing windows is going to fix your problem, and I still think that the best solution is to access the drive from a fully booted computer ......

I agree that that is probaby the easiest thing. However I have also has a single corupt file cause the reboot thing. And his safe mode boot is showing it rebooting up on the same driver each time.

I have so many programs installed and custimizations that I personally would always try to do a repair first. Starting from scratch really sucks.

I agree, which is why I already removed the rest of my post after watching that video.

I also agree with doing full system backups (not just data). I don't use ghost (it's a great program, though). Believe it or not, I use plain old Windows backup and back up the drive to another one (usually larger so I can keep multiple sets of full and incremental backups.) I'm anal enough to then copy the backups to yet a third drive, just in case.

And like you, I've had drives fail and been able to be back up and running in less than an hour by reinstalling Windows and then restoring the entire drive - system state, programs, and all - from my backup. In addition, I keep almost all of my data on a physically separate drive in the first place, and not on the system drive.

<ADD> and obviously, I also back up the data drive.   Now that drives have gotten so large, my next incarnation will almost certainly be a RAID 5 box.

[poppo]

... and been able to be back up and running in less than an hour by reinstalling Windows and then restoring the entire drive - system state, programs, and all - from my backup.

The advantage of Ghost or other cloning solutions (I have a hardware based cloner too) is not having to reinstall Windows. Just pop in the drive and you are good to go. But I'm sure backup software has gotten better over the years.

I even have a 'backup' laptop.  Exact same model (got it on e-bay for next to nothing). So the whole laptop can go up in smoke and I can still be up and running in no time. 

[StatFreak]

WinBlows backup really hasn't changed much (I'm still in XP and have no idea about Vista or 7). It still won't recognize CD/DVD drives (only wants to use f#$%n floppy drives) but then, it was really never really intended for those types of backups (floppy) anyway.

It does backup to a single medium (which used to be tape drives) so it's fine when the target is another hard drive. I stopped using CDs and DVDs years ago, since I currently have nearly a terabyte of data to back up. I don't even want to start thinking about how many DVDs that would be.

Another problem with the DVD solution is that even if one only has to use say, 20 DVDs, it's a labor intensive backup that requires attendance (I usually backup my stuff while I'm sleeping) and because of this, most people won't do it at all.

Most people I know who haven't worked in the computer field don't have a comprehensive backup solution. Once bitten, twice shy fixes that, although too late for most.

My favorite excuse is when I hear the home amateurs say that they've backed up their data only and can "just reinstall the software from the disks" if their machine crashes. All I can say to those types is, "Raza Ruk" unless they don't ever expect to get things back to the way they were and want to spend days (literally) trying to get everything reinstalled and updated from the net – and that's assuming that they can lay their hands on all of the original DVDs/CDs. The only types that might be okay with this solution are the ones that have almost no software installed and never change any of the Windows settings.

[Hotrodslots69]

Whats a Floppy Drive ??????