System blue screens and reboots endlessly under Windows XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neil Bradley
  • Start date Start date
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Neil Bradley

I've got a Windows XP system that blue screens and reboots endlessly.
This system worked perfectly a couple of days ago (and months before).
It gets right to the point where, apparentlly, it's trying to load the
kernel, blue screens, and reboots. When I went to bed last night, it was
fine. I woke up to it rebooting like this. (It restarted a bit after
4AM, which is when I have it download updates from MS).

System configuration:

* Intel D925EXCV2 system. 3GHz Pentium 4.
* 2 300 Gigabyte SATA Hard drives connected to the motherboard in a RAID
1 (mirrored) configuration
* 1 400 Gigabyte SATA hard drive connected to the motherboard - no raid
- just a standalone drive
* Using the onboard RAID controller

* Windows XP Service pack 2 with everything the latest updates from
Microsoft.

* System has been working fine for 2+ months. Rebooted a couple of days
ago and everything was OK then.

* The boot order in the BIOS is the same as it has been since day one -
no changes, and I verified the peripherals are OK.

* There are no problems with the RAID array according to the controller.

Odd things I've noticed:

* Windows XP now thinks the 400 gigabyte drive is my C (boot) drive, and
the 300 gigabyte array is my D drive. No idea how this happened, but the
RAID controller itself still thinks the 300 gig array is the C drive.

* The blue screen, I'm assuming, is an inaccessible boot device or some
other problem, as I had a similar problem on another machine. I've seen
this problem if the boot order in the BIOS doesn't match the same boot
order as when XP was installed.

* The RAID controller driver *IS* present and installed

* If I boot up in debug mode, the system boots to the login screen. I
can click to login, type my password, and as the system is starting to
boot, the entire system freezes - no mouse movement, no keyboard -
completely dead.

* I attempted to do a repair install, but it claims there is no XP
installation on the RAID array drive, yet I can boot in to the recovery
console (and loading the RAID drivers off the floppy via F6) and it
winds up showing up as my C drive if I disconnect the 400 gig drive, and
my D drive if I have the 400 gig drive connected.

I'm doing a chkdsk /f, but does anyone have any idea what could've
happend to cause this, or better yet, what I can do to fix it? The data
is still there on the drive, so I haven't lost anything.

-->Neil
 
You should have installed,1st intel chipset installation utility,then
install intel
matrix storage manager,i believe thiers a 925 chipset add on utility also,all
at intel.com/downloads/chipset software
 
Andrew said:
You should have installed,1st intel chipset installation utility,then
install intel
matrix storage manager,i believe thiers a 925 chipset add on utility also,all
at intel.com/downloads/chipset software
Click to expand...

The chipset installation utility is a Windows application, and that was
installed after I could get the system to boot. How do you suggest that
I get it installed if I can't boot the system?

BTW, Further information - chkdsk /r /p said that it found and corrected
one error. I went through and did a bootcfg /rebuild, and that actually
allowed me to do a "repair install".

However, the repair install, after it restarts, just continues to reboot
over and over when booting off the hard drive. ;-( DAMNIT! Why doesn't
it just tell you what the problem is?

-->Neil
 
Neil Bradley said:
However, the repair install, after it restarts, just continues to reboot
over and over when booting off the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Have you tried last good config or safe mode?
;-( DAMNIT! Why doesn't
it just tell you what the problem is?
Click to expand...

Actually it does create a minidump or full dump that contains
complete technical data for investigation.
The blue screen message is oriented to
general users. Basically it says that if the problem won't go
away after using last good config or so, call for help.

--PA
 
Pavel said:
Have you tried last good config or safe mode?
Click to expand...

Yeah, neither worked.

Well, it appears the catalyst causing the problem was done at 4:03AM.
Funny, I have automatic updates turned on which download/install
themselves at 4AM.

I booted in to the recovery console, ran bootcfg to scan for Windows
installs, then a repair install, and everything is OK again. Actually,
everything is OK again after I unplugged one of my other SATA drives and
moved it to a different port. Had nothing to do with the boot drives, so
go figger. ;-| Only 5+ hours wasted.

-->Neil
 
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