OS choice at bootup: One blank!

[Brian M Davis]

It all started when suddenly, out of nowhere, my P4 2.4Ghz 768MB XP Pro
SP1 machine started rebooting spontaneously. After some time I finally
realized it was doing this mostly while either running eMule and browsing w/
IE or while running a setup file, AV disabled.
Sending error reports would tell me that either that it was an unknown
driver error or that it was an unknown graphics driver error. Occasionally
it would tell me to run the Windows Memory Diagnostic.
I decided to troubleshoot based on the frequency of the recommendations
I would get from the error reports. I first decided to reinstall all of my
drivers. I then focused on my GeForce 4 graphics card driver by going back
to a previous version until I got back to the original that came with the
box. I suspected thus far that I was wasting my time because all installed
drivers had been running on this machine for at least two months with no
problems.
I then focused on my Hercules Game Theater XP sound card. Hercules
asserted that the latest driver was safe to run even though it was not
submitted to Microsoft for testing and approval. After removing the hardware
and uninstalling the driver, things did get much more stable, but Windows
still continued to reboot while running a software setup file.
The last time I did that, things really seemed to have gone awry as I
got a stop error on the next bootup. I rebooted and got a different error
stating that a system file was missing or corrupt and that inserting the
Windows cd may be able to fix the problem.
I tried to do a repair, but that just took me to DOS and I had no idea
what to do at that point. I typed in "Help" and read the description of each
command. I tried something like "Fixboot". Chkdsk wouldn't run saying that
there was at least one unrecoverable problem. I looked at something similar
to "Fixboot" but the description scared me off. I took the disk out and
decided to try booting to Windows again.
Upon booting, much to my surprise, I was asked to choose which OS I
wanted to boot to. To my knowledge, I only had one installed. What's really
weird is one choice is Windows XP and the other choice is simply a blank
space!!! I selected Windows and all booted up as normal. I rebooted to see
if I would get the option again. I did. I selected the blank. It booted the
same as it did when I had just selected Windows. Nothing..... absolutely
nothing looked abnormal on either bootup.

Any ideas what's going on here? Any course of action to recommend?

Thank you for your time and knowledge!

 

[Tumbleweed]

It all started when suddenly, out of nowhere, my P4 2.4Ghz 768MB XP Pro
SP1 machine started rebooting spontaneously. After some time I finally
realized it was doing this mostly while either running eMule and browsing w/
IE or while running a setup file, AV disabled.
Sending error reports would tell me that either that it was an unknown
driver error or that it was an unknown graphics driver error. Occasionally
it would tell me to run the Windows Memory Diagnostic.
I decided to troubleshoot based on the frequency of the recommendations
I would get from the error reports. I first decided to reinstall all of my
drivers. I then focused on my GeForce 4 graphics card driver by going back
to a previous version until I got back to the original that came with the
box. I suspected thus far that I was wasting my time because all installed
drivers had been running on this machine for at least two months with no
problems.
I then focused on my Hercules Game Theater XP sound card. Hercules
asserted that the latest driver was safe to run even though it was not
submitted to Microsoft for testing and approval. After removing the hardware
and uninstalling the driver, things did get much more stable, but Windows
still continued to reboot while running a software setup file.
The last time I did that, things really seemed to have gone awry as I
got a stop error on the next bootup. I rebooted and got a different error
stating that a system file was missing or corrupt and that inserting the
Windows cd may be able to fix the problem.
I tried to do a repair, but that just took me to DOS and I had no idea
what to do at that point. I typed in "Help" and read the description of each
command. I tried something like "Fixboot". Chkdsk wouldn't run saying that
there was at least one unrecoverable problem. I looked at something similar
to "Fixboot" but the description scared me off. I took the disk out and
decided to try booting to Windows again.
Upon booting, much to my surprise, I was asked to choose which OS I
wanted to boot to. To my knowledge, I only had one installed. What's really
weird is one choice is Windows XP and the other choice is simply a blank
space!!! I selected Windows and all booted up as normal. I rebooted to see
if I would get the option again. I did. I selected the blank. It booted the
same as it did when I had just selected Windows. Nothing..... absolutely
nothing looked abnormal on either bootup.

Any ideas what's going on here? Any course of action to recommend?

Thank you for your time and knowledge!

If you have an unrecoverable error on your disk the only sensible course of
action is to install a new one asap and then copy your data over to it.

 

[Brian M Davis]

Ooops..... Sorry, Tumbleweed......

I neglected to mention that I ran the Error Checking utility after all that
and no errors were found.

I'll run Chkdsk from the Windows disk again to see if it still tells me of
unrecoverable errors. If Chkdsk finds something, shouldn't the Error
Checking utility find something as well?

As a last resort, I'll try backing up and reformatting.

.....unless there are any other suggestions.

 

[Shiva]

Hi Brian,

You should remove one of those entries from the file boot.ini or forget
about displaying a list of operating systems anyway.

Try this:
My Computer (rightclick) -> properties-> advanced tab -> startup and
recovery settings
Now:
- uncheck 'time to display list of operating systems'
OR
- click edit, then will edit c:\boot.ini. Make a backup of this file first,
this is not without any risk. Do you see 2 entries of OS? Good. Remove of
the entries since both seem to work (I expect them to be the same).

I'd recommend the first option, that's the safest thing to do.

Good luck,

 

[Alex Nichol]

Upon booting, much to my surprise, I was asked to choose which OS I
wanted to boot to. To my knowledge, I only had one installed. What's really
weird is one choice is Windows XP and the other choice is simply a blank
space!!! I selected Windows and all booted up as normal. I rebooted to see
if I would get the option again. I did. I selected the blank. It booted the
same as it did when I had just selected Windows. Nothing..... absolutely
nothing looked abnormal on either bootup.

You have an extra, spurious line in the boot.ini file. Go to Control
Panel - System - Advanced page and click Settings in 'Startup and
Errror'. There click Edit to load it in NotePad.

There should be lines like

[boot loader]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS ="XP Pro" /fastdetect

where the text in " " is what you see in the menu. (/fastdetect may
have wrapped around here from the line it should be on)

Keep the one with the name of the system, and delete any other in the
operating systems section. In the upper section you should have just
the one that matches the multi(0) through \WINDOWS of the one you kept