Can't get desktop after login

[msg]

Greetings:

Win2K SP3 Server, local security policy only, no AD, no domain:

System is from an IDE drive cloned to a SCSI drive,
IDE drive no longer bootable. System boots on the SCSI clone drive
to the login screen, validates logins, complains can't restore
network shares (unreachable--even a locally mapped share),
declares "at least one driver failed to load" and exits back to
the login screen (netlogon service not running?).

Safe-mode boots are no different.

In-place upgrade repair is not an option.

Recovery console started, inspection of services shows many set
to manual that used to be auto, etc. Changing network related
services to 'auto', 'system', 'boot' etc. had no effect on
problem.

We would very much appreciate any registry edits or recovery
console suggestions or debug procedures to 'get a desktop'
(at which point repairs are _MUCH_ easier). Registry edits will
need to be done using an offline registry editor of course (we're
considering the Norwegian linux-based one).

All replies much appreciated.

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum

 

[Miha Pihler]

Have you tried Repair in Recovery Console?

Mike

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Did you try to examine the .evt event logs from Event Viewer on another
computer?? -- Steve

 

[George Neal]

Explorer.exe is the default shell for all versions of
Windows except Win3X. Try logging on. Once the logon
process stops, press Ctrl-Alt-Del. This should bring up
the Security Dailog Box. Click on the Task Manager button
and open Task Manager. Go to the File menu and select
Run... Type in Explorer in the text box and click OK. This
should get your desktop back. Now you have to deduce why
Explorer is not starting. I had a student who messed up
his copy of Win2K a couple of years ago. Explorer wasn't
starting. Unfortunately, I can't remember what he did to
fix it. Hope that helps.

 

[msg]

Have you tried Repair in Recovery Console?

Thanks for your reply. Yes, and the 'repair' options are limited.
Repair cheerfully offered to replace hundreds of files (upgraded
by SP3) to roll back to originals but I declined. Whatever else
'repair' does didn't change the problem.

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum

 

[msg]

Thanks for your reply.

Explorer.exe is the default shell for all versions of
Windows except Win3X. Try logging on. Once the logon
process stops,

It really never stops, it aborts back to the "Press CTL ALT DEL
to login" screen after complaining about network shares.

press Ctrl-Alt-Del. This should bring up
the Security Dailog Box.

I tried this at several points during the login process before
the abort but it does nothing.

Click on the Task Manager button

Can't get there, o that I could!

and open Task Manager. Go to the File menu and select
Run... Type in Explorer in the text box and click OK. This
should get your desktop back.

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum

 

[msg]

(see the start of the thread for overview)

Experimentation produced the following solution:

1. Fortunately we had done an ERD procedure just prior to the final
shutdown of the IDE-based
system so we had the 'regback' directory containing a good registry.

2. With the SCSI drive attached as a secondary on a different machine
(Win2k Pro) copied
the registry files in 'regback' to the 'config' directory.
--note: couldn't do this in 'recovery console' when this disk was a
secondary: 'access denied'

3. Move the SCSI drive to the original system as primary.

4. Boot into safe mode.

5. Login as a privileged user and then shutdown.

6. Restart to a normal boot.

7. For some reason the ethernet card is redetected as a different card
and assigned to
a new connection requiring manually restoring TCP/IP settings,
however Netware settings
remained intact.

8. So far it seems that everything else remains unaffected...


The original IDE drive remains unbootable with two problems:

1. On boot there are no messages, only a flashing cursor at the upper
left of the screen
---this implies the fragmented MFT problem documented for NT4 and
this drive is
99.5% full but MS claims that Win2k doesn't suffer from this
issue. 'Fixmbr' was
run on this drive with no change to this problem.

2. Booting with a 'fault tolerant recovery diskette' gets one to a 0x7b
stop error, status
code 0xf1c1b84c which describes STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND; this is
not an arc path
error and the IDE controller chipset is unchanged.

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum