M
Mike O.
I'm looking for some advice on repairing a system with a damaged Windows XP
O/S.
The computer (actually it belongs to my parents) is a Dell Optiplex, P3 500.
What happened is that the internal PCI modem (a Best Data 56HP92 /PCTel) was
giving an "excessive line current" message and disconnecting them from the
net. The phone lines seemed OK, and all the phones work properly. I tried
a laptop into the same phone jack, and everything worked fine with that with
no problems (connected at 48+K). Based on some research I decided it was an
erroneous warning. I decided to try to replace the driver with the one
downloaded from the Best Data support site, thinking that it might possibly
take care of the problem.
About three quarters through the driver replacement, with no warning, the
system rebooted. Now I can't get Windows to come back up. I figured I'd
use safe mode and use "system restore", but even though I can hit F8 and get
the menu, any of the options (safe mode, last known good, etc.) lock up
after they start. On the modes that show the drivers loading, it stops
after loading the NDIS.SYS. I'm assuming at that point it's trying to load
the damaged/corrupted modem driver. I've tried physically removing the
modem from the system, it had no effect.
I had showed my parents how to periodically copy critical stuff to floppies,
but I'm sure it's not been consistent, and I'm trying to avoid a full system
rebuild. They have kept up on the antivirus & security updates (mostly),
and don't open unknown attachments, so I'm pretty confident it's not virus
related.
I've been in the computer field for a long time (20+ years), and work pretty
extensively on Windows PC and server management in my job, everything from
DOS/Win3.1 through Server 2003 (I'm not trying to impress anyone, I just
want to show that I'm not totally clueless<G>), so I've got some ideas on
some things I can do, but I figured I'd post this message to see if there's
some direction I'm missing. Besides, on most of the cases I deal with, it's
in a corporate environment; it's often easier to just rebuild the "standard"
configuration and restore the data from the previous night's backup.
Here's some of what I plan:
1) Put the drive as a secondary drive in another WinXP system. Verify that
the disk is not completely corrupted. If it is, I'm pretty much looking at
a rebuild anyway. If' it's readable, copy off what I can so if I end up
making it worse, I can at least recover something.
2) Assuming the drive's not hosed, find the modem driver files in
Windows\system32 and delete them. Windows may still complain if it can't
find them on boot up, but at least it won't try to load the
corrupted/damaged drivers.
3) Use the XP CD to do a system repair (then all the service packs, hot
fixes, etc.)
4) Reinstall windows on top of the existing O/S, but don't format the drive.
It would save their data, but unfortunately, I'd still have to reload all
the apps and reconfigure everything.
Sorry about the length of this posting. Any suggestions would be
appreciated.
Mike O.
O/S.
The computer (actually it belongs to my parents) is a Dell Optiplex, P3 500.
What happened is that the internal PCI modem (a Best Data 56HP92 /PCTel) was
giving an "excessive line current" message and disconnecting them from the
net. The phone lines seemed OK, and all the phones work properly. I tried
a laptop into the same phone jack, and everything worked fine with that with
no problems (connected at 48+K). Based on some research I decided it was an
erroneous warning. I decided to try to replace the driver with the one
downloaded from the Best Data support site, thinking that it might possibly
take care of the problem.
About three quarters through the driver replacement, with no warning, the
system rebooted. Now I can't get Windows to come back up. I figured I'd
use safe mode and use "system restore", but even though I can hit F8 and get
the menu, any of the options (safe mode, last known good, etc.) lock up
after they start. On the modes that show the drivers loading, it stops
after loading the NDIS.SYS. I'm assuming at that point it's trying to load
the damaged/corrupted modem driver. I've tried physically removing the
modem from the system, it had no effect.
I had showed my parents how to periodically copy critical stuff to floppies,
but I'm sure it's not been consistent, and I'm trying to avoid a full system
rebuild. They have kept up on the antivirus & security updates (mostly),
and don't open unknown attachments, so I'm pretty confident it's not virus
related.
I've been in the computer field for a long time (20+ years), and work pretty
extensively on Windows PC and server management in my job, everything from
DOS/Win3.1 through Server 2003 (I'm not trying to impress anyone, I just
want to show that I'm not totally clueless<G>), so I've got some ideas on
some things I can do, but I figured I'd post this message to see if there's
some direction I'm missing. Besides, on most of the cases I deal with, it's
in a corporate environment; it's often easier to just rebuild the "standard"
configuration and restore the data from the previous night's backup.
Here's some of what I plan:
1) Put the drive as a secondary drive in another WinXP system. Verify that
the disk is not completely corrupted. If it is, I'm pretty much looking at
a rebuild anyway. If' it's readable, copy off what I can so if I end up
making it worse, I can at least recover something.
2) Assuming the drive's not hosed, find the modem driver files in
Windows\system32 and delete them. Windows may still complain if it can't
find them on boot up, but at least it won't try to load the
corrupted/damaged drivers.
3) Use the XP CD to do a system repair (then all the service packs, hot
fixes, etc.)
4) Reinstall windows on top of the existing O/S, but don't format the drive.
It would save their data, but unfortunately, I'd still have to reload all
the apps and reconfigure everything.
Sorry about the length of this posting. Any suggestions would be
appreciated.
Mike O.