G
Guest
Ok, I need some advice from an MVP or similar that really knows his/her
stuff. I fix computers for a living, so amateurs need not apply...
I've done maybe 50-70 repair reinstalls of xp. Most everytime, it has gotten
through the install process, if not fixing the problem at hand. A customer
brought in a Dell 4400 with a dead cpu and motherboard, so we replaced it
with an Intel motherboard that looks identical to the Dell m/b, which is NLA.
My boss initiated the repair reinstall as per KB824125 while I was out of the
office on a service call. Somewhere during the GUI setup phase, it
blue-screened with a bugcheck, and unfortunately, the error was not recorded.
By the time I inherited this, it was stuck in a "setup is restarting" loop.
The loop pattern is that shortly after shortly after this message, the mouse
pointer appears, and then a error message flashes on the screen for a
half-second or so and then it resets. The first error message that was
presented was referencing SAM and system security, and it looks like the stop
code is 0xc00000189, and this is not in the MSDN bug check code database.
Viewing the setuperr.log from RC or BartPE shows "setup encountered an error
while trying to set system security. An extended error has ocurred."
So, thinking that perhaps another attempt at a repair reinstall might save
the day (and the customer's programs, data, etc) I booted from the customer's
Dell OS CD and and started over. Setup informed me that it "had already
attempted to upgrade" but would try again if I pressed enter, so I did and it
got through the "blue screen" phase of setup, restarted and again aborted at
the same point, but this time it complains about Not enough virtual memory or
paging file quota is available to complete the required operation" - but for
some reason, this error does not get written to setuperr.log, which shows the
contents and date/time stamp corresponding to the previous error.
I did boot into BartPE and had a look at the registry setting for the
pagefile, and it shows the path as c:\pagefile.sys, and the file does exist.
Note that this issue does not appear to be SLP or hardware related. I was
able do a fresh install from the Dell CD onto a spare hard drive and it
completed without errors. I was also able to a parallel install onto the
customer's hard drive, and this also worked.
One bit of news that may or not be a factor: when the boss initiated the
repair reinstall, he used a generic OEM CD w/sp2. This machine shipped in
2002 (pre-sp2) but browsing the c:\windows directory shows that sp1 had been
installed, but sp2 had not. I am guessing that a service or something to do
with XPSP2 being used on a repair reinstall over XPSP1 has something to do
with the problem.
What I would really like to know at this point is if there is a way of
causing xp to forget about the previous setup attempts. There has to be a
file or setting or folder that can be deleted or modified to do so, but so
far, I haven't found one.
While I can get the system running by doing a fresh install or using the
parallel install, doing so means that the customer would have to reinstall
all programs, recreate all user IDs, email accounts and move the data where
it needs to go - a lot of work.
Anyone out there know how to break the "setup is restarting" loop? I don't
know that it will save the day, but a fresh repair reinstall seems like the
next thing to try.
stuff. I fix computers for a living, so amateurs need not apply...
I've done maybe 50-70 repair reinstalls of xp. Most everytime, it has gotten
through the install process, if not fixing the problem at hand. A customer
brought in a Dell 4400 with a dead cpu and motherboard, so we replaced it
with an Intel motherboard that looks identical to the Dell m/b, which is NLA.
My boss initiated the repair reinstall as per KB824125 while I was out of the
office on a service call. Somewhere during the GUI setup phase, it
blue-screened with a bugcheck, and unfortunately, the error was not recorded.
By the time I inherited this, it was stuck in a "setup is restarting" loop.
The loop pattern is that shortly after shortly after this message, the mouse
pointer appears, and then a error message flashes on the screen for a
half-second or so and then it resets. The first error message that was
presented was referencing SAM and system security, and it looks like the stop
code is 0xc00000189, and this is not in the MSDN bug check code database.
Viewing the setuperr.log from RC or BartPE shows "setup encountered an error
while trying to set system security. An extended error has ocurred."
So, thinking that perhaps another attempt at a repair reinstall might save
the day (and the customer's programs, data, etc) I booted from the customer's
Dell OS CD and and started over. Setup informed me that it "had already
attempted to upgrade" but would try again if I pressed enter, so I did and it
got through the "blue screen" phase of setup, restarted and again aborted at
the same point, but this time it complains about Not enough virtual memory or
paging file quota is available to complete the required operation" - but for
some reason, this error does not get written to setuperr.log, which shows the
contents and date/time stamp corresponding to the previous error.
I did boot into BartPE and had a look at the registry setting for the
pagefile, and it shows the path as c:\pagefile.sys, and the file does exist.
Note that this issue does not appear to be SLP or hardware related. I was
able do a fresh install from the Dell CD onto a spare hard drive and it
completed without errors. I was also able to a parallel install onto the
customer's hard drive, and this also worked.
One bit of news that may or not be a factor: when the boss initiated the
repair reinstall, he used a generic OEM CD w/sp2. This machine shipped in
2002 (pre-sp2) but browsing the c:\windows directory shows that sp1 had been
installed, but sp2 had not. I am guessing that a service or something to do
with XPSP2 being used on a repair reinstall over XPSP1 has something to do
with the problem.
What I would really like to know at this point is if there is a way of
causing xp to forget about the previous setup attempts. There has to be a
file or setting or folder that can be deleted or modified to do so, but so
far, I haven't found one.
While I can get the system running by doing a fresh install or using the
parallel install, doing so means that the customer would have to reinstall
all programs, recreate all user IDs, email accounts and move the data where
it needs to go - a lot of work.
Anyone out there know how to break the "setup is restarting" loop? I don't
know that it will save the day, but a fresh repair reinstall seems like the
next thing to try.