Windows Recovery Console

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neil Fox
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Neil Fox

A PC was giving a problem with a Blue Screen, found it
was hanging on the load of agp440.sys.

Used KB article 324764 to boot the system into the
Recovery Console. I nneded to repair the disk with CHKDSK
so that I could see a Windows Installation.

No able to see Windows Installation 1.

No the tricky part. All the PC's I sell I keep the
administrator password in my inventory records. However I
did not set up this PC and have tried many different
passwords that the owner could think of to no avail.

Is there any way of finding the password as otherwise I
will not be able to disable the agp440 service meaning
that system will need a complete reinstall.

The person who owns the PC uses it for his graphic design
company ond has not backed up his work for some months,
so a format and reinstall would be really screw things
up. ( before you say I told him he was stupid for not
backing up)

Can anyone give me any pointers on this one?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Neil Fox
 
Hi,

By default the admin pwd in recovery console should be blank. If you cannot get in all is not lost as you can install Windows to a new directory thus you will be able to backup all your data. The steps are below on how to install windows to a new directory.

1. Insert your Windows XP CD
2. Restart the machine
3. Press the key specified to enter your BIOS. In most cases you need to press Del to enter the BIOS setup. You should see a message on startup, right in the beginning, which says something like “press <key> to enter setupâ€. E.g. Press Del to enter setup
4. Go into either the Boot section, if you have one, or the 2nd option (should be something like “BIOS features setup†or “Advanced BIOS featuresâ€)
5. Change to boot sequence (should show as “boot sequence†or first boot device; 2nd boot device; 3rd boot device; etc.) so that CD-ROM is first
6. Exit saving changes
7. When you see the message to press any key to boot from CD, press any key
8. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press Enter to do a clean install
9. Press F8 to agree to the license agreement
10. Press Esc to perform a clean installation. (If this option is not available, skip to the next step.
11. Press Enter to install to the selected drive
12. Press C to continue if prompted
13. When prompted to format, select the option to “Leave the current file system in tact†and press Enter
14. At the next screen, press Esc to change the directory
15. Change the path to \WinX
16. Press Enter
17. Complete the installation

Regards,
 
A few ideas:

1. Try safe mode, instead of the recovery console.

2. Try runing the recovery console from a Windows 2000 CD. I recall
reading several months back that a "hole" in the XP security could be
exploited via a win2000 CD.

3. Try making a rescue CD on another PC, using Bart's PE builder. As I
recall, it is not fussy about things like passwords.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

4. Try an alternative rescue CD via a web search on "rescue CD" or similar.

5. There are third-party programs, mostly LINUX based, that can reset the
administrator password. Try a web-search on "password reset."

6. Boot on a DOS floppy that includes NTFS read/write drivers. Such
drivers are not free, but are available from www.sysinternals.com. However,
their read-only (also copy-only) drivers are free.
 
How do you know agp440.sys is the culprit?
If it's because that's the last thing you see on the screen when in your
bootlog then it could be the next thing that tries to load after agp440.sys.
 
Bob,

I have tried the Safe Mode but still hangs at agp440.sys.

I have a Windows 2000 Server CD I will try and run the
recovery mode if the option is available. The PC only has
XP installed as the OS, ro the Recovery option may not
appear.

I will try the opther options.

Many thanks for your help everyone, I will post how it
goes.

Neil
 
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