And now it happened to me.

The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a black screen
just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes don't change anything. In
Recovery Console, I did:

- fixboot
- fixmbr (it warned that the partition was non-standard)
- replaced ntdedect and ntldr (just in case, they seemed OK)
- didn't fix anything with bootcfg, because it looked quite normal - just one
installation in C:\windows, properly identified, no options out of the ordinary

It still hangs right after POST, so it is something else. Or it *is* the MBR,
but fixmbr can't fix it.

Can anybody recommend a good MBR edit tool? I'll be checking for such online,
but if somebody knows a good one from personal experience, it will be appreciated.

Otherwise, the drive seems quite OK; I have plugged it in an external USB
adapter and I can edit/modify etc.

There is one NTFS partition, using the entire drive. It was created by using
Paragon, copying the backup of the previous (smaller) drive onto this
replacement drive, and extending it to cover the entire disk. Could Paragon have
done something not quite standard, and that is the reason for the message from
fixmbr, and its inability to fix it?

How it happened:
I was working using ZoneOs ZoneScreen to extend my desktop to another adjacent
laptop, using the second laptop as a second monitor (the two laptops using the
firewire connection for that). At some point, I stupidly dragged the NVidia
control panel from the master desktop to the extended, forgetting that it is not
a real display, and it didn't work and screwed up ZoneScreen so that the desktop
could no longer be extended, just mirrored. So I decided that it was time to run
checkdisk on the master anyway, and had it scheduled on reboot, and rebooted.
What I noticed was that it took unusually long to shut down, and that was that.
On reboot, it hung.

In case someone asks, the computer itself is fine. I'm using it to write this
message now, having replaced the unbootable drive with the previous one. It is
(because older) still SP2, and I notice that NTLDR has a different date and is
binary different in places. Did they change NTLDR between SP2 and SP3? Should I
replace the SP3 NTLDR with the SP2 one?

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
--
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

On 05/01/2011 05:43 PM, Patok wrote:
> And now it happened to me.
>
> The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a black
> screen just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes don't
> change anything. In Recovery Console, I did:
>
> - fixboot
> - fixmbr (it warned that the partition was non-standard)
> - replaced ntdedect and ntldr (just in case, they seemed OK)
> - didn't fix anything with bootcfg, because it looked quite normal -
> just one installation in C:\windows, properly identified, no options out
> of the ordinary
>
> It still hangs right after POST, so it is something else. Or it *is* the
> MBR, but fixmbr can't fix it.
>
> Can anybody recommend a good MBR edit tool? I'll be checking for such
> online, but if somebody knows a good one from personal experience, it
> will be appreciated.
>
> Otherwise, the drive seems quite OK; I have plugged it in an external
> USB adapter and I can edit/modify etc.
>
> There is one NTFS partition, using the entire drive. It was created by
> using Paragon, copying the backup of the previous (smaller) drive onto
> this replacement drive, and extending it to cover the entire disk. Could
> Paragon have done something not quite standard, and that is the reason
> for the message from fixmbr, and its inability to fix it?
>

<snip>

from the repair console try chkdsk /r

On Sun, 01 May 2011 18:43:36 -0400, Patok <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>And now it happened to me.

LOL. Bound to eventually.

>The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a black screen
>just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes don't change anything. In
>Recovery Console, I did:
>
>- fixboot
>- fixmbr (it warned that the partition was non-standard)
>- replaced ntdedect and ntldr (just in case, they seemed OK)
>- didn't fix anything with bootcfg, because it looked quite normal - just one
>installation in C:\windows, properly identified, no options out of the ordinary

I would insert dummy lines in Boot.ini, pointing to other or even
non-existent partitions, with appropriate names.

So you can tell if your booting is getting to boot.ini. So it will
stop at boot.ini.

Which seems to be the stop after ntdetect, and ntldr.

And you'll know it got that far, even if it later gets stuck loading
windows. In fact, once you are at boot.ini, I think you can then
press F8, and choose safe mode, so you'll know better where it freezes
if it freezes in that part.

If it never displays the boot.ini list, then it is one of those two
files (There are more files inolved when you have dual boot.)


Question. I read somewhere serious that bootcfg doesn't work in XP
home, only Pro. OTOH, a microsoft article about the commands in
recovery console made no such distinction. I've never used it.
Does it work in Home.

Regardless, it's easier to use a boot cd like Hirens to fiddle around
with boot.ini than to use the recovery console, I think.


>It still hangs right after POST, so it is something else. Or it *is* the MBR,
>but fixmbr can't fix it.
>
>Can anybody recommend a good MBR edit tool? I'll be checking for such online,
>but if somebody knows a good one from personal experience, it will be appreciated.
>
>Otherwise, the drive seems quite OK; I have plugged it in an external USB
>adapter and I can edit/modify etc.
>
>There is one NTFS partition, using the entire drive. It was created by using
>Paragon, copying the backup of the previous (smaller) drive onto this
>replacement drive, and extending it to cover the entire disk. Could Paragon have
>done something not quite standard, and that is the reason for the message from
>fixmbr, and its inability to fix it?
>
>How it happened:
>I was working using ZoneOs ZoneScreen to extend my desktop to another adjacent
>laptop, using the second laptop as a second monitor (the two laptops using the
>firewire connection for that). At some point, I stupidly dragged the NVidia
>control panel from the master desktop to the extended, forgetting that it is not
>a real display, and it didn't work and screwed up ZoneScreen so that the desktop
>could no longer be extended, just mirrored. So I decided that it was time to run
>checkdisk on the master anyway, and had it scheduled on reboot, and rebooted.
>What I noticed was that it took unusually long to shut down, and that was that.
>On reboot, it hung.
>
>In case someone asks, the computer itself is fine. I'm using it to write this
>message now, having replaced the unbootable drive with the previous one. It is
>(because older) still SP2,

Isn't it going to upgrade to sp3 soon? They kept saying we had to
do this, but on two computers, I've seen the normal MS upgrades
include a whole SP. I would set your updating to the second option,
so you have some control over when it upgrades, so it doesn' decide to
do it when you need the computer. Am I right about that concern,
guys?

> and I notice that NTLDR has a different date and is
>binary different in places. Did they change NTLDR between SP2 and SP3? Should I
>replace the SP3 NTLDR with the SP2 one?

In my recent case, I replaced the sp2 ntdetect with the sp3 one from
my own computer, before the broken computer was working well enough to
even start windows, let alone upgrade itself. And it was okay.

But I woudn't do what you are suggesting since you have other things
to do first, like modifying boot.ini.
>
>--
>You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.

On Sun, 01 May 2011 20:26:44 -0500, philo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On 05/01/2011 05:43 PM, Patok wrote:
>> And now it happened to me. >>
>> The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a black
>> screen just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes don't
>> change anything. In Recovery Console, I did:
>>
>>
>
><snip>
>
>from the repair console try chkdsk /r
>
Good point.

mm wrote:
> On Sun, 01 May 2011 20:26:44 -0500, philo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> On 05/01/2011 05:43 PM, Patok wrote:
>
>>> And now it happened to me.
>>> The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a black
>>> screen just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes don't
>>> change anything. In Recovery Console, I did:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> from the repair console try chkdsk /r
> Good point.

Sorry, guys, that's the first thing I did; I just forgot to mention it.

Now, more weirdness.
I downloaded HxD, a very nifty hex editor that can open absolute disk
sectors, partition sectors, and files. First I checked to see is there any
difference between the two MBRs (absolute sector 0) of the two drives. It
appears, that beyond the necessary differences for the partition sizes, the two
MBRs are identical (including the boot code). So the problem is (no longer) the MBR.
Next, I checked the boot sectors (sector 0 of the partition), which is the
one that actually has code to run the NTLDR. And here is the greatest weirdness
I've ever seen. The sector contains, besides the code, error messages - "Ntldr
is missing" and such; and the non-bootable drive contains exactly that. However,
the *other* drive, the one I'm booting with, contains other messages - "Bootmgr
is missing", and the name of the thing to run (in the beginning of sector 1) is
BOOTMGR ! Now, I'm most certain I don't have Bootmgr anywhere on the drive, and
I never did. (Apparently it is the name of the loader for Vista and 7). Could
I have at some point trialled installing Vista or 7? I don't remember; hardly.
Still, that may be a clue. I'm going to try some things in that direction. For
example renaming NTLDR to see if it ever gets to that, and then maybe the
boot.ini suggestion.

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
--
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

Patok wrote:
> mm wrote:
>> On Sun, 01 May 2011 20:26:44 -0500, philo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>>
>>> from the repair console try chkdsk /r
>> Good point.
>
> Sorry, guys, that's the first thing I did; I just forgot to mention it.
>
> Now, more weirdness.
> I downloaded HxD, a very nifty hex editor that can open absolute disk
> sectors, partition sectors, and files. First I checked to see is there
> any difference between the two MBRs (absolute sector 0) of the two
> drives. It appears, that beyond the necessary differences for the
> partition sizes, the two MBRs are identical (including the boot code).
> So the problem is (no longer) the MBR.
> Next, I checked the boot sectors (sector 0 of the partition), which is
> the one that actually has code to run the NTLDR. And here is the
> greatest weirdness I've ever seen. The sector contains, besides the
> code, error messages - "Ntldr is missing" and such; and the non-bootable
> drive contains exactly that. However, the *other* drive, the one I'm
> booting with, contains other messages - "Bootmgr is missing", and the
> name of the thing to run (in the beginning of sector 1) is BOOTMGR !
> Now, I'm most certain I don't have Bootmgr anywhere on the drive, and I
> never did. (Apparently it is the name of the loader for Vista and 7).
> Could I have at some point trialled installing Vista or 7? I don't
> remember; hardly. Still, that may be a clue. I'm going to try some
> things in that direction. For example renaming NTLDR to see if it ever
> gets to that, and then maybe the boot.ini suggestion.

To follow-up - no, renaming and removing NTLDR and ntdetect.com changes
nothing - there's no error message. It just hangs, which suggests the boot code
is not processing them at all. At this point I'm not really sure what to do -
would a repair install be able to correct the issue? I have a backup, but it is
not sector-by-sector, it is the files of the partition, and I'm afraid it won't
make it bootable, if there's some hidden issue there.
I regret not being in the DOS days - there were such nice tools then! There
was Norton Disk Doctor, which, IIRC, had specialized modes for displaying boot
sectors - one could instantly see the disassembled code and the data that went
with it! Now, if I want to see the code, I have to copy and paste into different
programs, and it is not convenient.
Anyhow, I'm checking out the different possibilities outlined in
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb457123.aspx
in the meantime, if anybody has a suggestion for a good disk doctoring
utility, please advise.

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
*
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

Patok wrote:
> And now it happened to me.
>
> The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a
> black screen just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes
> don't change anything. In Recovery Console, I did:
>
> - fixboot
> - fixmbr (it warned that the partition was non-standard)
> - replaced ntdedect and ntldr (just in case, they seemed OK)
> - didn't fix anything with bootcfg, because it looked quite normal -
> just one installation in C:\windows, properly identified, no options
> out of the ordinary
> It still hangs right after POST, so it is something else. Or it *is*
> the MBR, but fixmbr can't fix it.
>
> Can anybody recommend a good MBR edit tool? I'll be checking for such
> online, but if somebody knows a good one from personal experience, it will
> be
> appreciated.
> Otherwise, the drive seems quite OK; I have plugged it in an external
> USB adapter and I can edit/modify etc.
>
> There is one NTFS partition, using the entire drive. It was created
> by using Paragon, copying the backup of the previous (smaller) drive
> onto this replacement drive, and extending it to cover the entire disk.
> Could
> Paragon have done something not quite standard, and that is the
> reason for the message from fixmbr, and its inability to fix it?

Maybe. As you probably know, when you are restoring an image Paragon sets
things up so that it's what boots. However, if that's what happened I can't
fathom why fixmbr didn't fix it.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

On 05/01/2011 09:56 PM, Patok wrote:
> mm wrote:
>> On Sun, 01 May 2011 20:26:44 -0500, philo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>> On 05/01/2011 05:43 PM, Patok wrote:
>>
>>>> And now it happened to me.
>>>> The symptom is the typical MBR screwup - the computer hangs on a black
>>>> screen just after completing the POST. Trouble is, the fixes don't
>>>> change anything. In Recovery Console, I did:
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> from the repair console try chkdsk /r
>> Good point.
>
> Sorry, guys, that's the first thing I did; I just forgot to mention it.
>
> Now, more weirdness.
> I downloaded HxD, a very nifty hex editor that can open absolute disk
> sectors, partition sectors, and files. First I checked to see is there
> any difference between the two MBRs (absolute sector 0) of the two
> drives. It appears, that beyond the necessary differences for the
> partition sizes, the two MBRs are identical (including the boot code).
> So the problem is (no longer) the MBR.
> Next, I checked the boot sectors (sector 0 of the partition), which is
> the one that actually has code to run the NTLDR. And here is the
> greatest weirdness I've ever seen. The sector contains, besides the
> code, error messages - "Ntldr is missing" and such; and the non-bootable
> drive contains exactly that. However, the *other* drive, the one I'm
> booting with, contains other messages - "Bootmgr is missing", and the
> name of the thing to run (in the beginning of sector 1) is BOOTMGR !
> Now, I'm most certain I don't have Bootmgr anywhere on the drive, and I
> never did. (Apparently it is the name of the loader for Vista and 7).
> Could I have at some point trialled installing Vista or 7? I don't
> remember; hardly. Still, that may be a clue. I'm going to try some
> things in that direction. For example renaming NTLDR to see if it ever
> gets to that, and then maybe the boot.ini suggestion.
>



To boot XP

you need


boot.ini
ntdetect.com
ntldr



There should not be bootmgr...

Patok wrote:
> Patok wrote:
>> mm wrote:
>>> On Sun, 01 May 2011 20:26:44 -0500, philo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> from the repair console try chkdsk /r
>>> Good point.
>>
>> Sorry, guys, that's the first thing I did; I just forgot to mention it.
>>
>> Now, more weirdness.
>> I downloaded HxD, a very nifty hex editor that can open absolute
>> disk sectors, partition sectors, and files. First I checked to see is
>> there any difference between the two MBRs (absolute sector 0) of the
>> two drives. It appears, that beyond the necessary differences for the
>> partition sizes, the two MBRs are identical (including the boot code).
>> So the problem is (no longer) the MBR.
>> Next, I checked the boot sectors (sector 0 of the partition), which
>> is the one that actually has code to run the NTLDR. And here is the
>> greatest weirdness I've ever seen. The sector contains, besides the
>> code, error messages - "Ntldr is missing" and such; and the
>> non-bootable drive contains exactly that. However, the *other* drive,
>> the one I'm booting with, contains other messages - "Bootmgr is
>> missing", and the name of the thing to run (in the beginning of sector
>> 1) is BOOTMGR ! Now, I'm most certain I don't have Bootmgr anywhere
>> on the drive, and I never did. (Apparently it is the name of the
>> loader for Vista and 7). Could I have at some point trialled
>> installing Vista or 7? I don't remember; hardly. Still, that may be a
>> clue. I'm going to try some things in that direction. For example
>> renaming NTLDR to see if it ever gets to that, and then maybe the
>> boot.ini suggestion.
>
> To follow-up - no, renaming and removing NTLDR and ntdetect.com
> changes nothing - there's no error message. It just hangs, which
> suggests the boot code is not processing them at all. At this point I'm
> not really sure what to do - would a repair install be able to correct
> the issue? I have a backup, but it is not sector-by-sector, it is the
> files of the partition, and I'm afraid it won't make it bootable, if
> there's some hidden issue there.
> I regret not being in the DOS days - there were such nice tools then!
> There was Norton Disk Doctor, which, IIRC, had specialized modes for
> displaying boot sectors - one could instantly see the disassembled code
> and the data that went with it! Now, if I want to see the code, I have
> to copy and paste into different programs, and it is not convenient.
> Anyhow, I'm checking out the different possibilities outlined in
> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb457123.aspx
> in the meantime, if anybody has a suggestion for a good disk doctoring
> utility, please advise.

Ok, I tried repair install, and it hangs exactly at the same place. After
copying the files from the CD, the computer reboots, where you'd expect
installation to continue from the HDD, and hangs exactly at the same position -
right after POST. And this is not computer specific - I put the disk into
another laptop, and it behaves exactly the same.
There is some major weirdness going on - after replacing the MBR code, and
the boot code, and doing repair install, it still (apparently) does *not*
process NTLDR, and hangs somewhere before that. (Renaming NTLDR elicits no
response. On a differn computer and disk, renaming NTLDR produces the expected
error message that it is missing.)
The only reason it /could/ do that, according to MS, is if it got confused it
is coming out of hibernation, and went to try to load hiberfile.sys. But if it
were a corrupted hiberfile, it *should* say something (as per MS).
Either there is a hidden/corrupted entry in the root dir, which the boot code
takes to be NTLDR and goes into it, i.e. nowhere, or the same thing happens WRT
hiberfile. The cause (I think) is that I scheduled a chekdisk on reboot. The
shutdown was abnormally long, and I think whatever checkdisk writes to indicate
the volume is dirty, went somewhere else, and corrupted something.

At this point, I can try doing a restore, but since it is a backup of the
logical contents of the partition, excluding the MBR and common bulky things
like the pagefile and such, I have little hope that it will restore whatever
went wrong. If it were a sector-level backup, then yes... but it isn't.

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
*
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

In news:ipn7gk$9j8$(E-Mail Removed),
philo wrote:
> To boot XP
>
> you need
>
> boot.ini
> ntdetect.com
> ntldr
>
> There should not be bootmgr...

If there is a bootmgr file, that is part of Vista/Windows 7. For
example, this laptop I am on right now used to have dualboot XP/W7.
Later I dumped Windows 7. I dumped all traces of Windows 7. And repaired
the XP boot system.

Although I believe Paragon was mentioned. Well guess what? The newer
versions of Paragon somehow thinks Windows 7 is still there (it even
states the right build number of Windows 7 in the logs). And it removes
the XP boot system and replaces it with the BCD boot system (what Vista
and Windows 7 uses).

Then I end up with what Patok sees. So Patok, did you ever have Vista or
Windows 7 on this hard drive before? I don't know what Paragon is seeing
that it still believes Windows 7 is still on my hard drive? But I can't
use Paragon on this machine because of this.

In my case, fixboot and fixmbr works to correct it. And I would look at
the boot.ini file again. Here is what it should look like on a drive
with a single partition.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo 1.83G - 2GB - Windows XP SP3