Can't boot, even into Safe Mode

[Paul]

Not really.... it's usually some other issue on a system that causes
problems. Updates often get blamed when they are not the real cause.

Such as when one MS update came out, and machines started tipping
over, and it turned out the root cause was the presence of TDSS
(Alureon) root kit on each affected machine. No problems if
you weren't infected.

Paul

 

[philo]

On 12/20/2012 07:11 PM, Paul wrote:
X

I can tell you how I installed WinXP.

1) Create two FAT32 partitions. First partition is going to be the new C:
2) Copy files from CD onto D:. All you need from the CD is the
i386 folder, and the 5000+ files in there. So the hard drive
becomes the source. The purpose of the FAT32 partitions, is so
that a relatively recent version of MSDOS can read and write them.
3) Boot computer with an MSDOS floppy. On my Win98 system, I
could do "sys A:" to make an MSDOS floppy. Or, there are even
MSDOS CD compositions (that I've not really tested), that could
be used. If you wanted to test an MSDOS CD image, you could try
the one here.

http://www.infocellar.com/CD/Boot-CD.htm (link near the top)

http://www.virustotal.com <--- Upload files here, to test for
viruses

Boot the floppy, and the prompt will be A:>

Change to whatever drive letter contains the i386 folder.
Let's say it is D:

D:
cd i386
winnt.exe

The first stage of install, copies i386 files to C:. MSDOS
is dog slow, and normally, you'd use the less-than-perfect
"smartdrv.exe" cache to speed up the transfer. But without
screwing around, and just letting an ordinary MSDOS floppy
do the job, the partition to partition file copy might take
an hour or so (one file a second maybe, that sort of thing).
With smartdrv running, it might take 20 minutes. I was never
able to get really decent (hardware limited) speed from it.
MSDOS sucks!

I've done that too and you definitely want to load smartdrv

I've tried it without and it was so slow that the installation never
completed

 

[BillW50]

In Paul typed:

Such as when one MS update came out, and machines started tipping
over, and it turned out the root cause was the presence of TDSS
(Alureon) root kit on each affected machine. No problems if
you weren't infected.

Paul

There are always bugs in updates. This is a fact of life. I've seen
plenty of them since running Windows since '93. And having programmed
for many years myself, thus this is unavoidable. Especially when you
consider there are like hundreds of thousands of different
configurations out there and you can't possibly test them all. And I
think that anybody not doing a system backup before an update is just
asking for trouble.

 

[glee]

Such as when one MS update came out, and machines started tipping
over, and it turned out the root cause was the presence of TDSS
(Alureon) root kit on each affected machine. No problems if
you weren't infected.

Paul

Yeah, that was lots of fun. I was "lucky" enough to have someone bring
me their machine because of that, not knowing yet that it was the root
kit at fault. Over the course of the evening, the issue was discovered,
and sure enough, the machine was infected. MS changed some of the
update parameters now to try and have updates fail if they hit an
infection, rather than have another mess like that. I had fun that
evening!

 

[glee]

In Paul typed:

There are always bugs in updates. This is a fact of life. I've seen
plenty of them since running Windows since '93. And having programmed
for many years myself, thus this is unavoidable. Especially when you
consider there are like hundreds of thousands of different
configurations out there and you can't possibly test them all. And I
think that anybody not doing a system backup before an update is just
asking for trouble.

Yes, there are often bugs, incompatibilities with certain apps, and so
forth.... some release notes for updates or SPs are fun to read, sort of
like those warnings on TV commercials for prescription drugs. "May
cause constipation, tremors, or death... so what are you waiting for!
Try it today!" But fortunately, the updates aren't as bad as
prescription drugs.

Backup is *never* a bad idea, is it?