Starts, then shuts down

  • Thread starter Thread starter ms
  • Start date Start date
M

ms

SP4

Installed nothing for at several weeks, daily cold boot.

I use WinPatrol, it warns me about any new startup.

Yesterday, a quiet computing day, during the day after early AM cold boot
and normal operation, I got a warning "user.ini", Microsoft. I disallowed
it the first time, allowed it the second popup. Thought it odd that after
years of normal operation, now was a funny time to be missing "user.ini" I
looked in my processes and there was nothing new, nothing unusual.

The rest of the day was normal, shutdown was normal.

This AM, turn on is normal, I see the windows logo screen, then it
immediately restarts. This repeats. It never completely boots up.

Advice?

ms
 
My wife's machine started the immediate restart behaviour a couple of
days ago. It would get to the end of the gas gauge in the windows splash
screen then immediately reboot with just a flash of a bsod that I
couldn't read. At first I suspected hardware, ran a memory test (OK) and
tried a few other things to no avail. Ran a chkdsk (from a Bart's Boot)
which found a problem with some indices but didn't help the rebooting.

Finally I did a Ghost backup of the affected partition then restored the
latest previous backup.

(The backup was two months old .... naughty me .... but she doesn't have
a lot of activity on that machine and her generated data - email, My
Documents, Favorites, Cookies etc - were backed up daily to a network
drive ..... At least that's what I thought. During this trouble shooting
I found that "automatic" backup had been failing for some time - another
story).

Restoring the backup fixed the problem completely. So it appears it was
software not hardware after all. Perhaps there is something nasty doing
the rounds. I don't know if my wife saw the "user.ini" warning that you
report though she normally wouldn't answer an unexpected pop-up without
checking with me.

I was able to open the backup I made of the corrupted partition in Ghost
Explorer and recover her generated data up to the time of the previous
shutdown (i.e. everything).


Hope you have a usable backup. Possibly a repair would do it but I
didn't have Dave Patrick's excellent instructions to hand plus I didn't
fancy having to do all the updates again which I believe is required
after a repair (could be wrong).
 
My wife's machine started the immediate restart behaviour a couple of
days ago. It would get to the end of the gas gauge in the windows
splash screen then immediately reboot with just a flash of a bsod that
I couldn't read. At first I suspected hardware, ran a memory test (OK)
and tried a few other things to no avail. Ran a chkdsk (from a Bart's
Boot) which found a problem with some indices but didn't help the
rebooting.

Finally I did a Ghost backup of the affected partition then restored
the latest previous backup.

(The backup was two months old .... naughty me .... but she doesn't
have a lot of activity on that machine and her generated data - email,
My Documents, Favorites, Cookies etc - were backed up daily to a
network drive ..... At least that's what I thought. During this
trouble shooting I found that "automatic" backup had been failing for
some time - another story).

Restoring the backup fixed the problem completely. So it appears it
was software not hardware after all. Perhaps there is something nasty
doing the rounds. I don't know if my wife saw the "user.ini" warning
that you report though she normally wouldn't answer an unexpected
pop-up without checking with me.

I was able to open the backup I made of the corrupted partition in
Ghost Explorer and recover her generated data up to the time of the
previous shutdown (i.e. everything).


Hope you have a usable backup. Possibly a repair would do it but I
didn't have Dave Patrick's excellent instructions to hand plus I
didn't fancy having to do all the updates again which I believe is
required after a repair (could be wrong).
Click to expand...
Thanks, Sid

I need some data on how to restore from DOS, I guess. I have daily
backups from Erndt, but no way to get to them.

If Dave Patrick has some data on this, hope he sees this.

ms
 
ms said:
I need some data on how to restore from DOS, I guess. I have daily
backups from Erndt, but no way to get to them.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with erndt so I can't help .... though a quick Google
suggests it's a registry backup program. If it *is* I don't know if that
would help in this instance. The restore that I mentioned in my case was
a full partition backup which restored the whole OS installation.
If Dave Patrick has some data on this, hope he sees this.
Click to expand...

Dave has links to his clear instructions for doing a repair
installation. I expect he'll see this but he's posted it here many times
before. If you went to Google Groups and searched there, you'd be bound
to find such a previous post.
 
I'm not familiar with erndt so I can't help .... though a quick Google
suggests it's a registry backup program. If it *is* I don't know if that
would help in this instance. The restore that I mentioned in my case was
a full partition backup which restored the whole OS installation.


Dave has links to his clear instructions for doing a repair
installation. I expect he'll see this but he's posted it here many times
before. If you went to Google Groups and searched there, you'd be bound
to find such a previous post.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I believe I found it, the header was- WINNT\SYSTEM32 file missing
or corrupted

Dave did give information, also John John. Some of that is pretty complex
for me.

I long ago created a ERD, now can't find it. The MS page on how to create
the ERD assumes a working OS. Mine now never gets past bootup, so I can't
now create the disk.

When I put in the OS CD, F8 on bootup, I get the menu to select drive, I
select the proper CD drive, Setup starts, but never see "last known
good", I stopped halfway through, Does "last known good" appear after
Setup?

?

ms
 
ms said:
Thanks, I believe I found it, the header was- WINNT\SYSTEM32 file missing
or corrupted

Dave did give information, also John John. Some of that is pretty complex
for me.

I long ago created a ERD, now can't find it. The MS page on how to create
the ERD assumes a working OS. Mine now never gets past bootup, so I can't
now create the disk.

When I put in the OS CD, F8 on bootup, I get the menu to select drive, I
select the proper CD drive, Setup starts, but never see "last known
good", I stopped halfway through, Does "last known good" appear after
Setup?

?

ms
Click to expand...

The "Last known good configuration" menu item is available when you press F8
at boot time. It is NOT available when you boot the machine with your WinNT
CD.
 
Is this what you're looking for?

If the system hive is corrupt, and assuming you already tried LKG (F8 and
choose Last Known Good), It may be possible to rename the system hive found
in
%systemroot%\system32\config\system
to system.old
then rename
%systemroot%\system32\config\system.alt
to
%systemroot%\system32\config\system

You can also try using the most recent backup found in
%systemroot%\repair\regback

If that fails you haven't much choice but to copy/ use the
original-as-installed system hive from
%systemroot%\repair\system
to
%systemroot%\system32\config\system
You'll need to reinstall the device drivers for any hardware added since the
original OS install.

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks. At
the "Welcome to Setup" screen. Press F10 or R to repair a Windows 2000
installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The Recovery
Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do not have
the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Note If the registry is corrupted
or missing or no valid installations are found, the Recovery Console starts
in the root of the startup volume without requiring a password. You cannot
access any folders, but you can carry out commands such as chkdsk, fixboot,
and fixmbr for limited disk repairs. Once the password has been validated,
you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access to the hard
disk. You can only access the following folders on your computer: drive
root, %systemroot% or %windir%



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
The "Last known good configuration" menu item is available when you
press F8 at boot time. It is NOT available when you boot the machine
with your WinNT CD.
Click to expand...
I just tried again. No CD in drive, I only see the screen "boot defaults".
Nothing about "last known..."

?

ms
 
Is this what you're looking for?

If the system hive is corrupt, and assuming you already tried LKG (F8
and choose Last Known Good), It may be possible to rename the system
hive found in
%systemroot%\system32\config\system
to system.old
then rename
%systemroot%\system32\config\system.alt
to
%systemroot%\system32\config\system

You can also try using the most recent backup found in
%systemroot%\repair\regback

If that fails you haven't much choice but to copy/ use the
original-as-installed system hive from
%systemroot%\repair\system
to
%systemroot%\system32\config\system
You'll need to reinstall the device drivers for any hardware added
since the original OS install.

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows
2000 Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not
have Setup floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the
Windows 2000 Setup CD, use another Windows 2000-based computer to
create the Setup floppy disks. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen. Press
F10 or R to repair a Windows 2000 installation, and then press C to
use the Recovery Console. The Recovery Console then prompts you for
the administrator password. If you do not have the correct password,
Recovery Console does not allow access to the computer. If an
incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery Console quits
and restarts the computer. Note If the registry is corrupted or
missing or no valid installations are found, the Recovery Console
starts in the root of the startup volume without requiring a password.
You cannot access any folders, but you can carry out commands such as
chkdsk, fixboot, and fixmbr for limited disk repairs. Once the
password has been validated, you have full access to the Recovery
Console, but limited access to the hard disk. You can only access the
following folders on your computer: drive root, %systemroot% or
%windir%
Click to expand...
Thanks, Dave. That is what I found.

When you use the % as in %systemroot, what exactly do you mean?

ms
 
From the command line;

echo %systemroot%

should return with the drive and directory where the operating system is
installed (aka \windows or \winnt)


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
From the command line;

echo %systemroot%

should return with the drive and directory where the operating system is
installed (aka \windows or \winnt)
Click to expand...

Thanks. For me, the data you mentioned is very complex.

I went to bootdisk.com and downloaded a new set of ERD disks.

I will search for how to use them in restoring the OS.

ms
 
ms said:
The rest of the day was normal, shutdown was normal.

This AM, turn on is normal, I see the windows logo screen, then it
immediately restarts. This repeats. It never completely boots up.

Advice?

ms
Click to expand...

Thanks to all

ms
 
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