Win XP sp2 startup hangs in boot loop.

[DocBrown]

I'm trying to repair a Gateway laptop for a friend. It is loaded with Win XP
sp2.

The problem is that the laptop appears hung after the first Windows spash
screen when trying to boot. I could not boot to Safe Mode either because, it
too, would hang.

I used Recovery console to run chkdsk /r and Partition Magic from the CD to
run a scan for errors. The chkdsk said it fixed some errors, but didn't
report what was fixed. Partition Magic reported no errors. This leads me to
think the disk is ok.

I used an Installation CD to perform a repair install and that seem to go
well. But the system still hangs. So I went to the F8 menu and said to
perform boot logging. When I use the Recovery Console to look at the
resulting ntbtlog.txt, it appears the boot process is hung in a loop. There
is a series of about 18 messages that repeat endlessly. They all start with
'Did not load driver blah blah bla...'

The list of drivers that did not load are:

HP Photosmart C6100
Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Media Control Devices
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Video Codecs
Wan Minport (L2TP)
Wan Minport (IP)
Wan Minport (PPPOE)
Wan Minport (PPTP)
Packet Scheduler Miniport
Packet Scheduler Miniport
Packet Scheduler Miniport
Direct Parallel
Intel Processor
Microsoft AC Adapter
Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery

This list appears to repeat endlessly. Does anyone know how to break this
loop? I'm not certain if one of these listed are the culpret or something
that occurred earlier.

The last driver that did load was agpCPQ.sys

Any help or pointers are welcome.

Thanks
John

 

[DocBrown]

After a further look down in the ntbtlog.txt file I find that the looping is
more complicated that I thought.

After a bunch of Did not load driver loops, more drivers get loaded, then
when new drivers get Did not load driver, they are added to the loop. Then
eventually, the driver Fastfat.sys is loaded. At this point it appears the
whole boot process starts over with the message:

Service Pack 211 8 2009 15:00:37.
Loaded driver \Windows\system32\ntoskernl.exe

That must be the main kernel.

Again, ideas on how to fix this. I'd like to try and avoid a reload because
I don't have all the install disks for the programs loaded on this laptop.

Thanks,
John S.

 

[SC Tom]

After a further look down in the ntbtlog.txt file I find that the looping
is
more complicated that I thought.

After a bunch of Did not load driver loops, more drivers get loaded, then
when new drivers get Did not load driver, they are added to the loop. Then
eventually, the driver Fastfat.sys is loaded. At this point it appears the
whole boot process starts over with the message:

Service Pack 211 8 2009 15:00:37.
Loaded driver \Windows\system32\ntoskernl.exe

That must be the main kernel.

Again, ideas on how to fix this. I'd like to try and avoid a reload
because
I don't have all the install disks for the programs loaded on this laptop.

Thanks,
John S.

And since you don't have all the application installation disks, can I
assume that neither you nor your friend have a viable back-up of the hard
drive?
It's possible that the laptop is infected with malware of some sort. You
could try one of the antimalware products that creates a boot CD to check it
out, or pull the drive and put it in another PC and scan it.
Using something like UBCD or Bart's PE ( http://www.ubcd4win.com/ or
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ ) you can offload your data to an external HDD
if you have one. Then try a system recovery from the Gateway CD's or
partition. (This is a destructive recovery; I don't believe Gateway's
recovery offers a non-destructive method.) This won't solve the problem of
not having the apps disks, but if you can get them at some later time,
you'll have all the data.

SC Tom

 

[DocBrown]

The biggest hurdle about a clean install is that I don't have the original
media so I don't have a installation CD with the matching Product Key that's
on the laptop that I'll be able to activate once the install is done. I have
media that I used for my install but I won't be able to activate it a second
time on the laptop.

Although, I may have already blown it by trying to perform a repair install
over the original image on the disk. Any thoughts on that?

In any case, I can't get past the place where the boot process hangs in the
loop. Until I solve that, I'm hosed.

So, Does anyone know how to break this loop, or at least find out what's
causing it? I'm thinking a hardware issue. I've got BartPD and UBCD and I'm
still learning how to use them.

I ran GWSCAN on the disk so that doesn't seem to be the problem. If this
were a desk top, I'd be pulling all the boards out. I've disabled everything
I can in the BIOS but still no joy.

I added the /bootlog in boot.ini and analyzed the setup*.log files but can't
see what's going wrong.

I do need to try that offline anti-virus scan in BartPE.

I also used the process from KB307545 which gives a process to recover a
corrupted registry that prevents Windows from starting. It had no effect on
the hang.

I'd think with the steps I've take, I'd have wiped out any virus present.
The only thing I didn't do was the FIXMBR because I got the big warning that
I might trash the partition table because I had a non-standard MBR. I think
the non-standard MBR is because Gateway has that recovery partition. Anyway I
thought I try that as a last resort.

All suggestions are welcome,

Thanks
John S.