Win2000 won't start after fairly new install

[Tom]

I have a fairly new install of win2000. I installed the OS, chipset
drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, windows updates, and antivirus (
AVG). All was well so far. The PC booted fine. I then installed an
Adaptec AHA-2940U card and 4 external hard drives. Again, all went well.
When I rebooted the PC, I accidentally turned off the power supply when
win2000 was loading, (that long white loading bar at the bottom of the
screen). After I restarted, the PC hangs after it finishes the BIOS boot
sequence and waits for the OS to load. No error messages, beeps or
anything, just stops. I have inserted the win2000 setup cd and it boots
from the cd and then says "examining the system" or some such message, and
then again nothing, just hangs. I am going to swap out another hard drive
to see what happens, but I really want to keep all the stuff I have
installed on the PC. I spent around 4-5 hours loading software getting this
ready for my office workstation. Odd that it doesn't give me an error,
BSOD, stack dump, beep or anything. Any ideas?

Hardware
Shuttle AV49PN Via chipset
Celeron 2.4
Fujitsu 3.2 gig hard drive(waiting for a good sale at Best Buy to get a big
drive and copy the drive image)
4 Seagate 30 gig UW SCSI hard drives in external case (ids 11,12,13,14)
(recycled from office trash)
Exabyte 8505xl external drive (id 5)
Adaptec AHA 2940UW (id 7) (recycled from office trash)
Matrox G450 dual
256 megs DDR 2100 RAM

Thanks for your help.

 

[Kevin Lawton]

Are you able to bring up the 'F8 menu' ? (ie: hit F8 just after the BIOS
finishes reporting as Windows starts loading to get the startup options).
If so, then try selecting 'Safe Mode with Command Prompt' which will give
you a list as modules and drivers load.
If it consistantly stops at the same point every time, then you'll have
another clue to post back.
Anything else going on - drive access lights on or off, for example ?
Have you tried removing the SCSI card which you put in just before the
problem started ?
Kevin.
P.S. If it always stops right after 'Mup.sys' then you're in good company !

| I have a fairly new install of win2000. I installed the OS, chipset
| drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, windows updates, and
| antivirus ( AVG). All was well so far. The PC booted fine. I then
| installed an Adaptec AHA-2940U card and 4 external hard drives.
| Again, all went well. When I rebooted the PC, I accidentally turned
| off the power supply when win2000 was loading, (that long white
| loading bar at the bottom of the screen). After I restarted, the PC
| hangs after it finishes the BIOS boot sequence and waits for the OS
| to load. No error messages, beeps or anything, just stops. I have
| inserted the win2000 setup cd and it boots from the cd and then says
| "examining the system" or some such message, and then again nothing,
| just hangs. I am going to swap out another hard drive to see what
| happens, but I really want to keep all the stuff I have installed on
| the PC. I spent around 4-5 hours loading software getting this ready
| for my office workstation. Odd that it doesn't give me an error,
| BSOD, stack dump, beep or anything. Any ideas?
|
| Hardware
| Shuttle AV49PN Via chipset
| Celeron 2.4
| Fujitsu 3.2 gig hard drive(waiting for a good sale at Best Buy to get
| a big drive and copy the drive image)
| 4 Seagate 30 gig UW SCSI hard drives in external case (ids
| 11,12,13,14) (recycled from office trash)
| Exabyte 8505xl external drive (id 5)
| Adaptec AHA 2940UW (id 7) (recycled from office trash)
| Matrox G450 dual
| 256 megs DDR 2100 RAM
|
| Thanks for your help.

 

[Tom]

Sorry,
I did remove the SCSI card and it still didn't boot. There is no F8 message
after it tries to boot from a CD, but I will try.

Tom

 

[Kevin Lawton]

Sorry - I can't have been clear enough. You don't get the F8 option when
booting off CD as far as I know.
You have a 'faulty installation' on your hard drive, yes ?
If you have the system set to boot from HD as usual then you should get
after switch-on:
POST (power-on self-test) and then the BIOS announces.
BIOS detects you IDE drives and floppies.
An attempt is made to find the boot sector on your selected boot device.
The boot vector is read from the boot sector.
The boot loader code is read at the boot vector, loaded and executed.
At this point the op system loading sequence begins - before the 'Starting
Windows' screen. If you have a multi-boot system, you'd get an options menu
and a time-out counter. If a previous execution of Windows shut-down badly,
you'd get the Safe Mode option here also.
Anyway, just hit F8 a few times as soon as the IDE devices have been
detdected, and you should get the menu which allows Safe Mode, Boot Logging,
Command Prompt, etc. Choose 'Safe Mode with Command Prompt' and watch what
happens.
I didn't ask, but should have, did you try starting up from the ERD ?
Sooner or later, somebody will probably suggest that you run the Recovery
Console. You might find the same problem with this as I have had, that the
installation of Windows 2000 hasn't completed sufficiently to let you use it
yet.
One other thing worth checking is that you've really taken the hardware
cofiguration back to the point where it last worked properly. I notice you
have four big SCSI drives. Them big old Seagates take a bit of power, so
have you actually disconnected them from the PSU as well as removing the
SCSI interface ? I just think it is worth eliminating a PSU problem. As you
are using a shuttle case, it might be a bit more difficult than usual to try
a PSU swap as I believe they use proprietary PSUs.
Kevin.

| Sorry,
| I did remove the SCSI card and it still didn't boot. There is no F8
| message after it tries to boot from a CD, but I will try.
|
| Tom
|
| || Are you able to bring up the 'F8 menu' ? (ie: hit F8 just after the
|| BIOS finishes reporting as Windows starts loading to get the startup
|| options). If so, then try selecting 'Safe Mode with Command Prompt'
|| which will give you a list as modules and drivers load.
|| If it consistantly stops at the same point every time, then you'll
|| have another clue to post back.
|| Anything else going on - drive access lights on or off, for example ?
|| Have you tried removing the SCSI card which you put in just before
|| the problem started ?
|| Kevin.
|| P.S. If it always stops right after 'Mup.sys' then you're in good
|| company !
||
||| I have a fairly new install of win2000. I installed the OS, chipset
||| drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, windows updates, and
||| antivirus ( AVG). All was well so far. The PC booted fine. I then
||| installed an Adaptec AHA-2940U card and 4 external hard drives.
||| Again, all went well. When I rebooted the PC, I accidentally turned
||| off the power supply when win2000 was loading, (that long white
||| loading bar at the bottom of the screen). After I restarted, the PC
||| hangs after it finishes the BIOS boot sequence and waits for the OS
||| to load. No error messages, beeps or anything, just stops. I have
||| inserted the win2000 setup cd and it boots from the cd and then
||| says "examining the system" or some such message, and then again
||| nothing, just hangs. I am going to swap out another hard drive to
||| see what happens, but I really want to keep all the stuff I have
||| installed on the PC. I spent around 4-5 hours loading software
||| getting this ready for my office workstation. Odd that it doesn't
||| give me an error,
||| BSOD, stack dump, beep or anything. Any ideas?
|||
||| Hardware
||| Shuttle AV49PN Via chipset
||| Celeron 2.4
||| Fujitsu 3.2 gig hard drive(waiting for a good sale at Best Buy to
||| get
||| a big drive and copy the drive image)
||| 4 Seagate 30 gig UW SCSI hard drives in external case (ids
||| 11,12,13,14) (recycled from office trash)
||| Exabyte 8505xl external drive (id 5)
||| Adaptec AHA 2940UW (id 7) (recycled from office trash)
||| Matrox G450 dual
||| 256 megs DDR 2100 RAM
|||
||| Thanks for your help.

 

[Tom]

Thanks for the info.
My 4 seagate scsi drives are in an external case and my computer case is a
generic P4 with 250 watt power supply. Small I know, but it was free. I
thought that perhaps the Adaptec card pushed the power requirements over the
limit of the PSU. I will try the F8 when booting as you recommend and will
also try bootine without the hard drive installed to make sure I get an
error message and connect an old dos hard drive to see if it boots. If I
hosed this install, I will probably get a 120gig WD hard drive $79 after
rebate at Best Buy this week and reinstall Win2000.

Thanks again.
Tom

 

[Tom]

Ok,

I entered the mobo bios and reset to safe defaults and it booted to the hard
drive. It went too fast to hit F8 and it froze at the end of the startup
white bar at the bottom of the screen. I then rebooted and entered F8 and
then safe mode with command, and then nothing. I restarted and tried just
safe mode, with no luck. It did say safe mode in color at the bottom of the
screen and then froze. An old drive with a win95 install seemed to work. I
think I have either messed up the win2000 install, or the entire partition.
I also tried the win2000 CD but it froze when analyzing the PC. I think if
I have to reinstall, I will get the big drive I wanted in the beginning. I
was mostly worried that the IDE controller was hosed.

Do you know of a way to run scandisk from the boot CD. It doesn't give you
any choices on booting.

Tom