Looking for motherboard

Flasherly · Jun 9, 2013

No, I can't start in safe mode. At the end of the BIOS session, I
tapped F8 repeatedly, but was asked to strike F1, floppy LED lit and
the message: Non System Disk appeared.
-

Sometimes easier to hit it from a boot arbitrator installed to a
dummy, say, DOS Partition1 [perfunctorily sys/IO/command.com] - w\Win
going on Part2.

SBMInstall -t UK -d 128 [1st HD, never a Win part, and should have an
available distributed DPMI manager to run first and prior to calling
SBMinstall.exe.]

Then setting up your boot menu, whereupon selecting SBM to engage the
Win partition, and, precisely at that selection point, in conjunction
to switching fingers up to F8 key. (I sometimes hold F6 & F8
simultaneously, or intermittently, sometimes also miss it, sometimes
depending on the OS condition & whether or not it finished a prior
shut down sequence without logging an error. Usually get safe mode,
though MS wouldn't in that sense and provision ensure you will.)

Paul · Jun 9, 2013

You can shrink the Vista partition down. While Windows 7 can do that
from Disk Management, I don't know if Vista has that feature or not.
(In Disk Management, right click on a partition and see if "shrink"
is an option.) A free third party partition manager may be able to
do that for you. And it can likely be done with a GParted Linux tool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_partitioning_software

Note that, for some entries in the listing there, there are actually
limited free versions available.

http://www.partition-tool.com/landing/home-download.htm

If your Vista is not bootable, you could give this a try as
a partition shrinking tool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gparted

"The GParted project provides a live operating system including
GParted which can be written to a Live CD, a Live USB and other media."

The main web page for this project, is littered with "advertising"
flavor download links. But the sourceforge files section for the
project, will get you to the actual downloads.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/

It appears the majority of the downloads are for the 486 version, but
I would expect the 686 version to work without a problem as well.

gparted-live-0.16.1-1-i486.iso 2013-05-01 139.5 MB

You burn that on a CD, boot the computer with it, then shrink
the partition as you see fit.

And, any time you are using a new partition manager, new and
unproven, you back up the disk first. As you never know what
is going to happen. With an early version of the Easeus one,
I could find reports of it screwing up a FAT32 partition.
Virtually any partitioning software, has to be tested, before
it can be trusted without a care in the world. Even my old copy
of Partition Magic, you had to be careful.

*******

If you shrunk down the Vista partition, then you'd have room for a Ubuntu
partition.

When you install a modern OS, the idea is, the boot manager on the second
installation, "steals control" from the first installation. If you install
Ubuntu second, it loads GRUB in the MBR, some sectors just above the
MBR, the partition boot sector area of the new partition, and so on.
GRUB has a boot manager. What it is supposed to do, during installation,
is scan for other OSes, and add them to the boot menu. There should be
a "chainload" entry somewhere there, to make Vista an option in the GRUB
menu. You see a relatively ugly boot menu with...

Ubuntu kernel 3.0.23 <--- Both OSes in menu
Vista <--- Vista is chain loaded if you select it

So it is possible to have both.

If you later remove Ubuntu, then you need to "fixmbr" using a Vista
recovery session tool. That puts Windows MBR code back in the MBR,
and points the boot operation back at the Vista boot manager.

It is also possible to use third-party boot managers, to run OSes.
I used to use something called Boot Magic on my first PC, and
I could have entries for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and so on,
in the menu. And it was pretty easy to add OSes to it.
I never used it after that first PC though.

So the fun when dual booting off a single disk, is learning
how the "theft based boot management" works, and repairing
the damage if you need to remove the one that is actually
doing boot management at the moment. This is one of the
reasons I run one OS per hard drive, because I can unplug
an OS disk with no side effects.

*******

As for your "press F8" problem, it is all a matter of timing.
Your BIOS is forcing you to press F1. You press F1, then *immediately*
start pressing F8 like crazy, milliseconds after that. You may
then be able to catch the F8 window, before it closes.

My laptop, it only has a one to two second window for some
of the key press options, which is ridiculously short. I
frequently miss the window on that one, and it bugs the
hell out of me (having to wait until it finishes booting,
do the shutdown and reboot, then see if I can hit the tiny
timing window on the second try).

Timing is everything :-)

Paul

Flasherly · Jun 9, 2013

PM is ancient, wouldn't know what it's doing on these newer drives.
Never had serious issue with Easeus Partition Master, quite impressive
in light of the old PartitionMagic standards -- nothing exceptionally
old to the EPM version. Run on various drives, besides, through
docking stations, from 200G and through the gamut to my upper limit,
whatever's shy of a 64-bit 2.2G Geo/FileSys.

Just been a bit wacko about a 3rd primary part I put on for grins, on
an old 200G physical HD, for running binary OS images through three OS
boot arbitrator options. Going to mess with the partition sizes
further and test more where and how the OS get installed. Tends, as
it is, to take well enough to a binary to Part2, no matter where
coming from, essentially fine, whereas if placed for Part3 strangely
throws off the OS into a permanent crash site.

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 10, 2013

In safemode the files load, but after I am left with a black screen.

I am wondering if I can copy the Vista boot loader from the Dell Vista CD into the Vista boot directory. I would have to do this in UBUNTU.

Paul · Jun 10, 2013

In Safe Mode, did you enable "Boot Logging" ?
Then, boot Ubuntu and look for the ntbtlog.txt file.

C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt <--- a guess at where it is stored

Read the file, noting what loaded last. The failing file,
is the one *after* the last entry in the file. We can only
guess as to what that is. And Google then, is where you start
to look for that info.

So start by collecting your ntbtlog.txt file. Then
look near the end.

If you can find a listing from a Vista user who did a
successful boot while using ntbtlog.txt, that will
provide a hint as to what is broken.

Not every ntbtlog.txt will have the same files. Machines
have different configurations, and there is no reason the
logs will look the same. You might have to look at a few,
until you figure out which one comes *after* your last
entry.

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 11, 2013

I don't get the option to enable boot logging.
I get the following options:

safemode;
safemode and networking;
safemode and command prompt.

All load files, but never boot. I get a black screen.

However, I found an ntbtlog.txt in media/OS/windows.

The file looks like an appendable file. It is a text file, but it is incomprehensible (not plain English).

Paul · Jun 11, 2013

It's the fourth item down, in the picture here.

http://www.fanhow.com/knowhow:Use_Advanced_Boot_Options_in_Vista_29260830

The results should look like this (captured after you reboot into
some other OS and run a text editor).

http://www.winvistaclub.com/image/ntbtlog.jpg

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 12, 2013

I did not see this screen. I saw

safemode;
safemode and networking;
safemode and command prompt.

No other options.

Paul · Jun 12, 2013

While not an answer, I dumped your situation into a search engine,
and found this.

http://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/boot/advancedoptions.htm

Menu Entry Option Value
---------- ------ -----

Safe Mode bootlog true

So what that is claiming, is bootlog is enabled for all three of
your available safe mode boot options. That's a relief, and
should allow you to collect a boot log, up until the screen
turns black. You don't need the fourth (missing option), because
all three of the first ones enable it.

You'll need to boot some other OS, and examine the C: partition,
to find the boot log file.

There is no guarantee the boot log file will tell us anything,
but looking at the end of the file might have some information
that can be used.

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 12, 2013

Do you mean that file that I found previously?

'However, I found an ntbtlog.txt in media/OS/windows.

The file looks like an appendable file. It is a text file, but it is incomprehensible (not plain English).'

Some people on the web believe that this 'Black Screen of Death' (KSOD) is caused by registry errors.

I am looking into this. I made a change recently, but it made no difference. I will continue to look into this and try a few things.

Have you come across a graphic that shows the correct entries for:

hkey_local_machine\system\controlset001\services\rpcss

Best wishes.

Paul · Jun 12, 2013

Vista is one of the few OSes I don't have here.
I don't even think I have a preview version to load in a VM.

In terms of recovering some registry information, remember that
you have multiple sources of such information.

1) There should be an empty set of registry files near where the
current registry files are stored.
2) System Restore, each restore point usually stores registry files.

The combination of those two, allows bootstrapping a system out
of a corrupted registry. Basically, you move the current reg files
to reg.bak, make a copy of the empty registry files so that they
will be the "current" ones, boot the system, run System Restore,
and restore to the last good restore point. The purpose of
doing that, is to make a copy of the registry file inside the
restore point and make that "current". Since the system will reboot
after a System Restore restoration, now your registry files are
as current as your last System Restore point was. It's
not a perfect procedure, but it might help.

Note - this bookmark is for WinXP.

"How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

I cannot find any article for later OSes, similar to that one,
just for WinXP.

The thread here, the user reports getting an error message
on the screen, for a missing registry file. So the boot
process apparently gets far enough along, that if there is
a registry problem, you should get an error message. That's
what this report tells me. The "SYSTEM" is actually one
of the five or six registry files. It has no file extension
on the end.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...try-file/e1b78f54-79b2-4d17-a203-64f24ce8eac6

"My HP computer with Vista Home Basic (SP 2) won't load windows.
It is telling me that the system registry file is missing or
corrupted. (Status: 0xc0000e9 FILE: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM)

*******

If you cannot make sense of the ntbtlog.txt, it might be in unicode
(16 bit), where every second character is 0x00. Wordpad or Notepad
should both know what to do. If you're in Ubuntu, I have a fair amount
of trouble with "gedit", getting the assortment of text files out
there, to all open properly.

In Ubuntu, you can use hexdump to take a sampling of the file.
This is just a rough guess at how to take a sample of the file.
You may need to adjust this, as you see fit. I think the -n
is so it'll dump the first 512 characters. Without a length parameter,
it'll likely dump the whole thing.

hexdump -C -n 512 /media/VISTA/Windows/ntbtlog.txt

Try that, then read the man page for hexdump if you need to
adjust it. The "-C" is for canonical hex dump format, with the
two columns of info (hex on the left, text on the right). If you
paste a sampling of the file, maybe I can guess whether it's some
new format or not.

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 14, 2013

I have opened ntbtlog.txt in Libre Office Writer (I tried to open the file in Gedit, but it became corrupted, possibly due to its length (583 pages). In Gedit it is readable, but little of the file loads.

I paste below the last dozen, or so, lines. It looks even worse here.

Best wishes.

#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #@#n#e#t#r#a#s#a#.#i#n#f#,#%#m#p#-#i#p#-#d#i#s#p#n#a#m#e#%#;#W#A#N# #M#i#n#i#p#o#r#t# #(#I#P#)#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #@#n#e#t#r#a#s#a#.#i#n#f#,#%#m#p#-#i#p#v#6#-#d#i#s#p#n#a#m#e#%#;#W#A#N# #M#i#n#i#p#o#r#t# #(#I#P#v#6#)#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #@#n#e#t#r#a#s#a#.#i#n#f#,#%#m#p#-#p#p#p#o#e#-#d#i#s#p#n#a#m#e#%#;#W#A#N# #M#i#n#i#p#o#r#t# #(#P#P#P#O#E#)#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #@#n#e#t#r#a#s#a#.#i#n#f#,#%#m#p#-#p#p#t#p#-#d#i#s#p#n#a#m#e#%#;#W#A#N# #M#i#n#i#p#o#r#t# #(#P#P#T#P#)#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #@#n#e#t#s#s#t#p#a#.#i#n#f#,#%#m#p#-#s#s#t#p#-#d#i#s#p#n#a#m#e#%#;#W#A#N# #M#i#n#i#p#o#r#t# #(#S#S#T#P#)#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #A#F#D#.#S#Y#S#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #A#F#D#.#S#Y#S#
#
#D#i#d# #n#o#t# #l#o#a#d# #d#r#i#v#e#r# #A#F#D#.#S#Y#S#
#
#

Paul · Jun 14, 2013

That's Unicode.

What might be missing, is the preamble, the thing that tells editors that
Unicode follows.

The 0xFF and 0xFE bytes, mean to interpret the rest of the file as Unicode.
Sixteen bit in this case, where every second byte is 0x00. This is the
first line from my ntbtlog.txt , created some time in June. This is the
contents of my file, starting from the very first byte of the file.

ff fe 20 00 53 00 65 00 72 00 76 00 69 00 63 00 65 00 20 00 50 00 61 00 63 00 6b 00 20 00 33

<sp> S e r v i c e <sp> P a c k <sp> 3

In Linux, if you did the hexdump -C -n 512 ntbtlog.txt and looked at it,
you may see a similar pattern.

If the 0xFF 0xFE are missing, then there is nothing to warn a text
editor what to expect.

Gedit in Linux, should be able to recognize that preamble. I've had
my share of problems with Gedit, so it doesn't always work (you get
that red dialog box warning Gedit could not figure it out.

Once you get the hang of it, have a look at the last lines and
see what they say. There could be a pile of "Did not load driver"
and lines indicating a driver was loaded. And once you get the
driver names, then the fun starts (the Google searches).

So either find an editor that can open the file, or, repair
the file so it has the right format, or whatever. Do your
best to retrieve the text. No guarantees it will lead anywhere,
but it's worth a try.

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 17, 2013

I tried the hexdump command.

At the beginning of the file I saw ff and fe,
Service pack 2

At the end of the file I saw:

cupdate..Genuine.I.ntel...d.l.l....Loaded driver

Paul · Jun 17, 2013

If you're seeing 0xFF and 0xFE at the beginning of the file,
then WordPad should be able to open it in Windows. And,
remove all those pesky 0x00 things that cause the dots.

Since it's in a standard format, other text editors (Unicode capable
ones), should work as well.

Give me at least a half dozen lines of clean text to work with.
From the end of the file.

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 17, 2013

I don't have Wordpad - Vista does not start. I tried to open the file in LibreOffice's Writer, but it was unreadable

I'll have a look at some other editors and see if I can get it to load.

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 17, 2013

I seem to be able to view the file in Google Docs.

I paste some of the last lines below:

Did not load driver @oem42.inf,%st.devicedesc%;SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC
Did not load driver Lexmark Z2300 Series
Did not load driver @oem48.inf,%ew-0301-7128.devicedesc%;Edimax 802.11g Wireless PCI Card
Did not load driver @oem1.inf,%hsfmodemrsl%;Conexant D850 PCI V.92 Modem
Did not load driver @netrasa.inf,%mp-l2tp-dispname%;WAN Miniport (L2TP)
Did not load driver @netrasa.inf,%mp-bh-dispname%;WAN Miniport (Network Monitor)
Did not load driver @netrasa.inf,%mp-ip-dispname%;WAN Miniport (IP)
Did not load driver @netrasa.inf,%mp-ipv6-dispname%;WAN Miniport (IPv6)
Did not load driver @netrasa.inf,%mp-pppoe-dispname%;WAN Miniport (PPPOE)
Did not load driver @netrasa.inf,%mp-pptp-dispname%;WAN Miniport (PPTP)
Did not load driver @netsstpa.inf,%mp-sstp-dispname%;WAN Miniport (SSTP)
Did not load driver AFD.SYS
Did not load driver AFD.SYS
Did not load driver AFD.SYS
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\fastfat.SYS

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 17, 2013

Just a note regarding the above.

The vast majority of the lines in this file are characterised by 'Did Not Load Driver'.

At the beginning of the file I note that all the sys32 drivers loaded.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes.

Paul · Jun 17, 2013

For some reason, in this example, a kernel file loads after fastfat.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...p/thread/e7da1186-b85a-401c-945c-c6b9c934116e

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\fastfat.SYS
Service Pack 1 3 28 2008 13:14:08.484
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\hal.dll

These two, seem to end with fastfat. The users have performance problems,
but I think their boot finished.

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive...c.windows.vista.general/2008-06/msg00302.html

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-performance-maintenance/222554-slow-bootup-vista-ultimate-x64.html

*******

The recommended procedure here, is to compare Safe Mode booting,
to Normal booting, and the difference between ntbtlog files
is supposed to tell you what file in Normal mode causes the
problem.

http://sourcedaddy.com/windows-7/how-to-analyze-boot-logs.html

*******

I'm tempted at this point, to suggest it has loaded all the files.
Because I did find two examples where fastfat was last. So maybe
you're not broken on boot files.

If you could precisely time the pressing of F8, for right after
you press whatever other key your computer wants, maybe
you could get into Safe Mode and re-test.

I was hoping ntbtlog would be more definitive. I was wrong.

Paul

not_here.5.species8350 · Jun 18, 2013

Have you come across a safe online facility that would check and repair the Vista drivers on my hardrive. I would need to run from within Ubuntu.

Thanks

Looking for motherboard

Flasherly

Paul

Flasherly

not_here.5.species8350

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